The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has applied to the Lahore High Court for the cancellation of PML(N) Vice-President Maryam Nawaz’s post-arrest bail on the grounds of her making speeches attacking state institutions. That would mark an extension of NAB’s responsibility from financial corruption to preserving state institutions from attack. It is true that Ms Nawaz has been very much part of the PDM campaign, and has been making speeches attacking the COAS and the DG ISI for interfering in politics. How this is inconsistent with her bail conditions with NAB, to which she has to report when summoned, is not clear. At present, she is not an accused, and is merely supposed to assist NAB with its enquiries. At her last summons, she did not appear, and at the one before that, she went with a crowd of supporters. It almost seems as if Ms Nawaz is being given a double message, even though it is none of NAB’s business to act as anyone’s messenger.
First, she is being given a warning that she should go easy on certain institutions, and second, that she should play a low-key role in the next move by the opposition, a long march on Islamabad. The second has become inevitable after the Senate elections, and Ms Nawaz was expected to play a key role in it. If the NAB application succeeds, she will be imprisoned for the very time that would count the most, for the long march must come before the Ramazan fasting begins in about a months’ time.
It is not a certainty that the application will succeed, for it seems that the superior courts are increasingly uneasy about the role NAB is playing. Increasingly, opposition figures are being granted bail, the latest example being Ms Nawaz’s cousin, Punjab Assembly Leader of the Opposition Hamza Shehbaz. Earlier, Supreme Court strictures on NAB while it granted PML(N) leader Kh Saaad Rafiq bail, did not cause NAB to change its modus operandi. Whether or not NAB is discredited by the present government’s use of it against its political opponents, it has made clear its intention to go after Ms Sharif. However, the operations of the court system are such that she might well get relief. However, if she is in jail during the Long March, the application will have served its purpose.
