Far removed from the twisty-turvy rollercoaster ride everyone at home has been forced to sit through, the House of Sharifs continues to bask in the proverbial sunshine. Exactly as feared when the second amendment to the NAB laws had reared its head back in August, former prime minister Nawaz Sharif became the first beneficiary of the stipulation that any corruption case involving a sum of less than 500 million would not stand triable by the accountability watchdog. In a Toshakhana reference involving the acquisition of vehicles from the state treasury, the court also pounded its gavel in favour of PPP leaders Asif Zardari and Syed Yousaf Raza Gillani simply because there remained no legal standing to implicate them.
That the changes in the NAB law were to have a retrospective effect, ultimately benefitting PML(N) in over 90 per cent of the corruption cases no matter their stage, lay at the heart of the PTI’s narrative. Proclaiming “RIP Accountability,” there had been an uproar against the sweeping legislation that wished to defang the watchdog and reduce it to a vestigial flicker of outrage.
From the looks of it, the state appears in no mood to even sit through these reservations or slowly dip their toes in the water. The coalition government has yet to table an alternative arrangement to take over the investigation of those accused of corruption. Having suffered under Damoclean’s sword for years on end, many on the treasury benches should have spearheaded measures that aimed to strengthen government agencies so that they could defy political pressures.
The heart-wrenching tales of arbitrary detention and crippling absence of constitutional relief whenever anyone fell from grace are secret to none. But horrors of the past should have rejuvenated vigour for a better tomorrow. Instead, an ironic dismantling transpired, which could only be understood as a last-minute attempt to save one’s own skin. The only way to land in an even deeper pit would be to authorise the use of NAB as an instrument of coercion against political rivals whilst accusations of yesteryears keep getting a clean slate. *