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Default Dawn, July 16th, 2017

PM’s accountability


THE next phase in the political fate of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif begins tomorrow.

The battle lines are now drawn, at least politically. The PML-N has vowed to fight corruption charges against its leader tooth and nail; the combined opposition, though in varying degrees, believes Mr Sharif should step down and let parliament get on with the business of electing a new prime minister.

Self-serving as the opposition demand may be, there is an undeniable logic to it. The PML-N’s claims are self-serving too, but they are less persuasive, at least from a democratic perspective. What remains to be seen is the PML-N’s legal strategy.

Thus far it has been a spectacular failure — an attempt to taint the proceedings against Mr Sharif as politically motivated without trying to address the allegations themselves.

As the JIT report has made clear, the Sharifs have continued to provide contradictory accounts of how the family apartments in London came to be in their possession. That is unacceptable, no matter what the concerns about the intentions and motivations of the JIT may be.

Surely, a decade into the latest transition to democracy, old excuses cannot stop the system from progressing towards a much-needed accountability of all. Unhappily, the JIT lived up to its reputation and delivered a report that is littered with unnecessary observations and distractions. It is almost as if the JIT were drawing up a political indictment for public consumption rather than strictly answering the questions put to it by the Supreme Court.

It must be remembered that the three justices of the Supreme Court who determined a JIT was necessary to answer certain questions about the so-called money trail of the London apartments did so with a relatively open mind. The JIT seems to have interpreted the questions as accusations and enthusiastically condemned Mr Sharif, his children and sundry allies.

The unnecessary and certainly undesirable approach of the JIT has prevented it from assembling a legally impregnable case against the Sharifs, something that will undoubtedly be exploited by the prime minister’s legal team in the Supreme Court.

Worse, the JIT’s undue aggression towards the prime minister and his family has cast a cloud over the whole proceedings, reinforcing arguments that the process is politically motivated. The Supreme Court ought to address the issue head-on and separate core facts in the report from unnecessary distractions. If Mr Sharif is to be shown the exit door, the process must be unimpeachable.

There is a further issue that the Supreme Court ought to consider. Some of the doubts about the true purpose of the proceedings against Mr Sharif can be removed if a clear road map is given for furthering the cause of accountability. It is right that Mr Sharif is being investigated first in the Panama Papers case, but accountability cannot and must not stop with him.

Sindh’s anti-NAB law

ACCOUNTABILITY has always been a flawed process in Pakistan. However, it makes no sense to do away with institutions responsible for ensuring accountability and replacing them with obedient rubber-stamp bodies that work to cover up the shenanigans of their political bosses. The PPP-led Sindh government, it appears, seems to be bent upon pursuing the latter course of action. On Friday, Sindh Governor Mohammad Zubair returned the National Accountability Ordinance 1999 Sindh Repeal Bill, designed to do away with NAB’s jurisdiction in Sindh, without signing it. In the weeks since the Sindh government passed the controversial law on July 3 in a stormy provincial assembly session, word on the political front was that the Sindh governor, who belongs to the PML-N, was going to do exactly that. However, Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah has ‘regretted’ the action, and said that the law will be sent back to the Sindh Assembly. Due to the PPP’s majority in the provincial legislature, the party will have little trouble in getting the law passed without the governor’s assent, even though opposition parties in Sindh have cried foul over it.

Perhaps in the upcoming Sindh Assembly session the law can be further debated and reviewed to remove the opposition’s and critics’ objections. As things stand, the law is widely being seen as an attempt by the PPP to protect itself and its supporters from oversight of any kind. Indeed, NAB’s performance has left a lot to be desired. But instead of proposing to reform the body, the PPP’s attempt to remove the federal body’s jurisdiction from Sindh points to something more sinister. There are very few who would believe that Sindh’s administration is being run in a transparent, corruption-free manner. The province’s crumbling health and education infrastructure and lack of basic facilities for its people all indicate that a large portion of the billions of rupees allocated for public expenditure are not being spent on the people’s welfare, but are ending up in certain pockets. Defective as the accountability infrastructure may be, replacing it with a submissive body at the beck and call of Sindh’s ruling party may do away with whatever little oversight of government finances remains. The PPP would do well to heed the criticism and review the anti-NAB law in the assembly session, and work towards reforming the body instead of eliminating it in the province.

Beaten to death


AFTER days of back and forth over the cause of death of young Akhtar Ali, a post-mortem report has finally been prepared.

It confirms what the boy’s family had been claiming since the 16-year-old’s body was recovered from the house of his employers in Lahore’s Akbari Gate area: the child was beaten with a blunt weapon, resulting in his death.

Talking to the media, SSP Investigation Mubashir Maiken on Friday further quoted the post-mortem report as saying that the boy’s body bore old wounds as well as fresh ones.

Consequently, into the murder FIR that was registered when the case first came to light, the police have now inserted an anti-terrorism clause making reconciliation between the two parties difficult.


Suspected of the murder is the employer of Ali and his sister for the past four years, Fauzia, daughter of PML-N MPA Shah Jahan.

There are many aspects to this tragedy that must simultaneously evoke emotions ranging from shock to unbearable sadness.

One is the sort of poverty and lack of governmental intervention/support that produces large families and forces parents to put their children to work in the first place.

Recent times have thrown up case after case of such domestic workers — young, unaware of any rights and often cut off from their families — being horribly treated.

Often, the conditions under which they work are hardly different from slave labour.

Another is the callousness of society itself, where the issue of child labour and the mistreatment of minors is deeply endemic and there for all to see, yet invisible until death or serious injury occur.

Most depressingly, not even the potential vanguards of change always have their hands clean — consider how many of the country’s educated families employ children, and in particular, ponder the fact that the politician parent of Ali’s suspected murderer is a member of the National Assembly’s standing committee on labour and human resource.

In such circumstances, can there be anything other than despair?

Source: Editorials
Published in Dawn, July 16th, 2017
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