- Better sense should to prevail
Since his abrupt return from London to ‘handle the Coronavirus pandemic’, PML-N president and leader of the opposition Shahbaz Sharif has popped up on the NAB’s (National Accountability Bureau) radar yet again. Sharif is no stranger to the accountability watchdog’s tactics of investigation and propensity to arrest before filing formal charges as he was once famously summoned to appear in one case but arrested in another. Although secured bail later, the experience must have been unsettling, revealing a lot about NAB’s unbridled powers and how it exploits them. Shahbaz Sharif has now been re-summoned tomorrow after he refused to appear last week in a fresh money laundering case due to the danger of contracting the Coronavirus at NAB headquarters in Lahore. NAB’s team insists that all measures have been taken to ensure safety and questioning will be done while practicing social distancing. Is it not possible then to ask these questions via mail or through video conferencing on any of the many platforms that have improved in quality as the entire world practices self-isolation by working from home?
Sharif is a 69-year old cancer survivor, which is exactly the kind of victim COVID-19 infects and kills very efficiently. The fear of arrest is therefore secondary to a fear of death in this case. An ongoing investigation into a land scam involving Mir Shakil Ur Rehman, the owner of one of the biggest media houses in the country, who was arrested before the virus had spread so rapidly, has appeared before accountability courts three times since then. Each time he was accompanied with a number of policemen, lawyers and cameramen in very close proximity to him, struggling to make way to court. His remand has been extended on each occasion. A prominent bureaucrat from Punjab, Ahad Cheema, has spent close to two years now in jail, waiting for bail as the cases against him are yet to be decided. NAB’s track record for conviction is as abysmal as the way it is conducting itself in the midst of a global pandemic. The entire country is technically on the exit control list with airports closed and flights suspended, so there is no literally no way to skip bail or leave the country in light of a summons. NAB should reassess its procedures so that they are in-line with Coronavirus safety protocols. An investigation or ongoing ‘corruption case’ does not have to be a death sentence.
