The acquittal of Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif and his sons by a special court in the Ramzan Sugar Mills money-laundering case registered by the FIA, is subject to two opposed vindicatory views. Mr Shehbaz Sharif and his son Hamza might feel, along with the entire PML(N), that they have been vindicated, and that the case, which was purely a product of political victimisation, had been successfully buried. The PTI and its diehards would see this as yet another example of the PDM government using its position to get rid of the various cases that were brought against its leaders. It is perhaps appropriate that this is not a NAB case, because it allows an objective look at the accountability process of the previous government. This was the case in which the PTI’s accountability czar, Shahzad Akbar, had claimed to have got the Sharifs dead to rights, and to have produced conclusive evidence.
This case was not affected by the NAB law amendments, passed by the present government in a joint sitting of Parliament. However, the benefit bhas applied to a number of other cases. Meanwhile, in Wednesday’s hearing of the petition, a three-member bench of the Supreme did observe that the amendments did open the way to corruption. However, while corruption is no doubt reprehensible, it could be argued that the fight against corruption could not be allowed to abridge the liberties of the citizen. Again, the Supreme Court is itself circumscribed by the Constitution, and will have to find the amendments repugnant to a constitutional provision or provisions, not to ‘international standards and local laws’, as remarked by the Chief Justice of Pakistan.
The practical question still hangs over the Ramzan case, why the PTI government was unable to get a court to convict. Did it not have the resources of the state at its disposal, not to forget the coruscating talents of Mr Akbar. Does PTI chief Imran Khan’s statement to journalists that he did not have the power of office as PM. If true, it raises the obvious question of why he is expected to change anything if returned to office. It also raises the question of his motive for holding a powerless office. If untrue, is it merely an excuse to explain away why his government’s accountability drive produced such poor results? It is self-evident that corruption is so widespread that it constitutes a problem. The years since 2018 indicate too that the PTI was not part of the problem, and might have become part of the problem.
