- The arrest at this juncture will not help national unity
PML Vice-President Maryam Nawaz has been arrested by NAB to answer questions about the Chaudhry Sugar Mills, along with her cousin Abdul Aziz Abbas, who was offloaded some days ago from a Hajj flight. PM’s Accountability Adviser Shehzad Akbar had alleged that the Sharif family had used the sugar mills for laundering money. He mentioned certain telegraphic transfers by Ms Sharif, as well as transfers of shares in the mills. The transaction occurred between 2010 and 2016. It is not clear why NAB chose this particular juncture to arrest Ms Nawaz, though he rece4nt political activities, starting with the press conference at which she unveiled a video purporting to show the judge in her father’s accountability case saying he was blackmailed to give a guilty verdict against an innocent man. Her high political profile going back to the time her father Nawaz, then Prime Minister, had a quadruple bypass in 2016, and continuing to the present with her whistle-stop tour of the Punjab, which has taken her to Faisalabad, Pakpattan and Khushab. It might be worth noting that she has already been convicted in the Avenfield reference, being given a seven-year sentence for abetment in July last year, but was bailed in September. Her father was convicted in another reference and sent back to jail. Her uncle Shehbaz and cousin Hamza are also in NAB custody. Her brothers Hussain and Hassan are out of the country, convicts in absentia in the Avenfield reference. There was an attempt by NAB to reopen the Calibri font case in the original accountability court, but the judge made short shrift of that.
While there is no doubt that accountability should be carried out, there is no gainsaying opposition fears that this is just part of the persecution of any PML-N leader who becomes too vocal, like former PM Shahid Khaqan Abbasi or Rana Sanaullah, ends up arrested. If this is so, it is only a matter of time before such vocal figures as Ahsan Iqbal and Khawaja Asif find themselves behind bars. The opposition might well be in disarray, but is that what the government wants. It seems to have allowed itself to become obsessed with accountability, to the extent that it is willing to sacrifice the unity of the country at a time when it needs it most.
