What Prime Minister Imran Khan desires most is neither justice nor recovery of the country’s looted wealth. He is fully focused instead on conducting the media trial of his political opponents. Over time this has become a political compulsion as he has nothing to show as an achievement despite a peaceful tenure and the full backing of those who matter. Prices of essential commodities have in cases doubled compared to the PML(N) tenure, and power and gas charges continue to increase. Instead of providing jobs to the unemployed, millions more have lost employment while those still working are unable to feed their families on account of inflation. Under the circumstances the unending accountability hype looks like an attempt aimed at diverting the people’s attention from their miserable plight.
If the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) granted amnesty to politicians, political workers and bureaucrats who were accused of corruption, there was a need to try Gen (rtd) Pervez Musharraf who signed the Ordinance in 2007 This was all the more justified because Musharraf had earlier used NAB to prepare corruption cases against numerous politicians in the opposition while declaring those who joined the King’s Party clean. If Pakistan has been made to pay $28.7 million in damages to Broadsheet, those under Musharraf who signed the faulty agreement in June 2000 and rescinded it three years later, are to be held responsible and put on trial.
Finding that Broadsheet award had nothing new with which to indict former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, the PTI government has appointed a one-man commission comprising former Supreme Court judge Mr Justice Sheikh Azmat Saeed. Citing his affiliation with the NAB at the time when the agreement with Broadsheet was signed, the PTI and PPP have objected to his appointment on grounds of “conflict of interest”. That he was a member of the bench that sentenced Mian Nawaz Sharif in the Panama Papers case also calls into question his neutrality. The commission is also supposed to probe 20 years of corruption in 45 days by taking up the Swiss cases, Surrey Mansion, and the Hudaibiya Paper Mills case which has already been thrown out by the Supreme Court. Yet another new exercise in the media trial of his opponents might provide a modicum of solace to the PM, but will neither bring back looted wealth nor allay the suffering among the masses caused by economic hardships.
