When the state wears the mantle of crime

The Candid Corner

I had a friend who had travelled the world, making a fortune in the process. Past his middle years, he decided to come back to Pakistan and settle down here. I was surprised and asked him about the reason that had prompted him to change his earlier resolve never to return. He said that he had done business in over a dozen countries stretching from Europe to Asia and Africa, but did not find a place which would actually legitimise an illegal act or a crime. It is only Pakistan where, if you have loads of money and consequent power that flows from it, you would be able to do anything that may tickle your fancy.

Through the years, the immensity of this statement has continued to dawn upon me. Pakistan is, indeed, an unfortunate country which is run by mafias and cartels. They have laid a siege to the state and their stranglehold is tightening further with time. The gross manifestations of this syndrome are unfurling before us on a daily basis as hordes of criminals walk away cleansed of their grievous crimes of which unimpeachable evidence is available with the investigation agencies. The statement of (now) suspended special prosecutor of FIA, Sikandar Zulqarnain, that he was ordered by his director-general not to appear before the court on April 10 last to indict Shahbaz Sharif and Hamza Shahbaz in money-laundering cases worth billions because, on that day, they were taking over as prime minister and chief minister of Punjab respectively, reflects grave dereliction of duty and complicity in crime. The manner in which that self-confessed criminal and absconder, Ishaq Dar, who was helped out of the country by the then prime minister, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, in his official plane, has been brought back with fanfare to take over as the finance minister of the country is even more gruesome. No court has stirred. No contempt has been moved.

Accountability was one of the foundational pillars of Imran Khan’s party manifesto. When he came into power, he made a brave bid for implementing it irrespective of the power or pelf that one had. He wanted everyone to be brought under the ambit of law and held accountable for the crimes that they may have committed during their years in power. When he tried to execute the plan, the state and its institutions jumped in to put a freeze on it. Nothing seemed to move. Nothing seemed to work.

It was only much later that the reasons became obvious. It was not Khan who was in command as the elected prime minister of the country. That power was being exercised by unseen forces which prefer lurking in the shadows. From making of a fictitious medical certificate to transport convict Nawaz Sharif out of the country, to granting interim bail to his daughter to look after her so-called ailing father and not having it withdrawn in later years, to delaying the hearings of numerous cases concerning the Sharif and Zardari clans and their henchmen – just about every trick was used to facilitate reprieve for these national criminals. In spite of these crude tactics, Khan refused to give in. So, with time, his space kept shrinking.

Since he had also delved into the domain of restoring Pakistan’s independence and asserting its authority to take decisions which were to the benefit of the state and its people, his presence had also become irksome for the foreign master which had, since long, been dictating what Pakistan could or could not do. This sell-out had been solemnised immediately after independence which set out the direction Pakistan’s foreign policy would take during the coming decades encompassing its plunge into wars against the former Soviet Union and terror which incurred huge human and material losses. Seeing that the traditional pattern of ruling the country was no longer possible in the presence of Khan at the helm, the foreign master and its local collaborators schemed to oust him through moving a vote of no-confidence. A cipher to that effect was sent by Pakistan’s ambassador in the United States outlining in detail the threat by a senior official of the host country.

Khan was ousted through a vote made possible by offering huge inducements to some PTI back-benchers. The entire institutional network of the country were part of the conspiracy to dismantle Khan’s legal, democratic and constitutional government and, in its place, induct a cabal of convicts, criminals and absconders to rule the country who immediately set out to getting themselves permanent reprieve from a plethora of grievous crimes. Thus, Pakistan attained another dubious uniqueness: it became the only country where influential criminals can first manoeuvre to assume power and then exploit that position to sit as judges to have their cases thrown out of the courts of law.

The role that mainstream media has played in enacting this gory episode is demeaning. The leading outlets and their agenda-driven operatives unleashed a ghastly onslaught of fake news to make people believe what was so patently false. News was also fabricated to promote a narrative in support of the criminal network. This is because the system has been so developed that it works by sharing the benefits of graft so that all functionaries have their pound of flesh which would keep them quiet. This constitutes a vast and venomous crime syndicate that has dug in its tentacles in every echelon of the administration.

Where are the courts which are supposed to provide justice? Where is the bureaucracy that is supposed to serve the state not its rulers? Where are the institutions which are designated to ensure transparency in all facets of governance? Where is the media that calls itself the fourth pillar of the state? Where are the legislators who decided to sell their souls, thus contravening the oath of their position? They stand naked in the court of people. They have also forced the state to wear the mantle of crime.

But times have changed. People have refused to digest this spectre of criminality. They are out protesting. Their voice is resonating across the expanse. It is building into a crescendo, a vibrant movement. The challenge is not how to bring Khan back into power. The challenge is how to do so through peaceful means.

Pakistan is faced with such a moment. It is a mammoth moment.

The writer is a political and security strategist and the founder of the Regional Peace Institute