Date: Wednesday,November 2nd, 2016.
Back from the brink
In the end it was the Supreme Court that restored a modicum of sanity. The government of the Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) led by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf led by Imran Khan had both painted themselves into a corner. The stage was set for confrontation and preliminary moves on Monday 31st October bode ill, laced as they were with tear gas and at least two deaths linked to them if not directly attributable. The Supreme Court sat on the morning of 1st November and swiftly asked the PML-N and the PTI to submit their Terms-of-Reference (ToR’s) for the formation of a Commission in order to probe the Panama Papers leaks. In the event of the parties being unable to agree on ToR’s then the SC would do the job for them and decide the ToR’s for itself. The Commission is to have the same powers as the SC itself.
The SC adjourned until 1p.m. to allow the parties to respond which they did and the Great Lockdown of Islamabad 2016 was over before it had begun in any real sense. For both sides, the government and the PTI, the decision allowed movement from fixed positions and the inevitable confrontation that was always going to be violent.
For the PTI there was an announcement that the 2nd November was to be a day of ‘Thanksgiving’ to be celebrated at the Parade Ground and attended by ‘a million people.’ The message was delivered by Imran Khan flanked by some exceedingly glum party apparatchiks who had just had a very large serving of egg straight between the eyes. For the government the Defence Minister Khawaja Asif said that ‘PML-N surrenders before the bench.’ Whether either party will accept whatever the decision of the Commission is once delivered is impossible to know and is anyway distant. For now tension is subsiding, dust settling and a faux ‘business as usual’ resumes.
For the battling parties there is now a reckoning, and both have accrued more debits than credits since the Panama Papers affair broke upon these shores. The core narrative was about corruption in high places — and specifically the movement of money to offshore parking by people who are very rich and want to find a way around their wealth being taxed by whatever country it was generated in. The Prime Minister was not named in the leaked papers, but members of his close family were and the PTI was on the case like a terrier after a fox.
The fox dodged and weaved, the terrier was frustrated at every turn and thus was born the impasse that the Supreme Court unglued on 1st November. The cause taken up by Imran Khan and the PTI was and remains impeccably worthy — the pursuit and exposure of corruption in governance and the creation of transparency. Despite not being named in the Panama Papers and it being unlikely that the PM actually did anything illegal with his money, there is a cloud of suspicion that can only be dispelled by a searching enquiry.
The cause was irreproachable, vital even, but Imran Khan was the wrong person to pursue it and his methodology and strategy deeply flawed from the outset. His chances of unseating a government with a comfortable parliamentary majority never looked good. The failure to use parliament as a vehicle to gain leverage was another poor play, as was the endlessly ratcheted-up bombast and rhetoric that stoked fires in the mind of Mr Khan but failed completely to engage any traction with the wider population. Viewed even with the shortest of hindsights the PTI lost the game to a government play that may best be characterised as ‘masterly inactivity’. The SC stepped in as both arbiter and referee, filling a cavity in governance dug by the respective parties. Whether either will take this as a learning experience is an open question, but for now an uneasy calm prevails.
A deadly profession
Today marks the third commemoration of the UN Day against impunity for the crime of targeting journalists — and if ever there was a country that has seen its journalists suffer one of the highest rates of mortality globally then Pakistan it is. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has recorded the murder of 66 journalists worldwide since the beginning of this year, and Pakistan has seen 59 journalists murdered in the line of duty since 1992, the most recent being Shehzad Ahmed of Aaj News and Mehmood Khan of Dawn News, both on August 8th and both in Quetta. This commemoration day is to draw the attention of the world to the culture of impunity that surrounds the deaths of journalists, a phenomenon not confined to this country. Governments, including the current incumbency, turn blind eyes and deaf ears when a journalist is killed, and the police generally look the other way as well.
It is no coincidence that 66 per cent of those killed were political reporters, and a further 20 per cent whose beat was human rights. Both are areas where this government would rather that anything other than favourable reviews did not appear in the daily prints and on TV as well as the burgeoning social media.
This day marks the start of a campaign by the International Federation of Journalists that is focusing on India, Pakistan, Mexico and Yemen all with lamentable, indeed shameful, records in respect of protecting journalists or prosecuting those that kill them. Pakistan is particularly egregious, and on this day a year ago a gathering of media practitioners and lawyers was told that there was no law in Pakistan that guaranteed the safety of journalists, and that the state was complicit in the creation of an enabling environment wherein media personnel, all types, could be targeted merely for doing their jobs. Globally a mere one per cent of cases involving the killing of a journalist are successfully prosecuted. On this day let us remember and commemorate those journalists that were murdered in the line of duty. They brought you the news that you read in this newspaper. And they gave their lives to do that.
Published in The Express Tribune, November 2nd, 2016.