Daily Times

The brief detention of the former Information minister for Sindh by anti-corruption officials couldn’t have happened at a better time for the PPP. For it comes exactly one year after the National Accountability Bureau deadline for deciding once and for all pending charges against the PM and his brother. That the NAB has to date failed to do so adds fuel to Sharjeel Memon’s stance of political victimisation from an agency sitting firmly in the government’s pocket.

Yet for all this, Memon has skilfully skirted the issue of why he is wanted by the NAB in the first place. Namely, the not so small matter of procedural irregularities amounting to billions in the awarding of advertising contracts for the Sindh government’s official electronic media awareness campaigns.

The timing couldn’t have been worse for the PML-N. It is already heavily embroiled in the Panama Papers scandal, which has made its way to the Supreme Court. Thus Memon’s return to Pakistan, following his two-and-a-half-year period of self-exile, has prompted murmurings of some kind of deal between both sides. Both PPP and PML-N or for that matter all political parties in Pakistan have a track record on backroom deals. PPP as we know is not averse to behind-the-scenes handshakes with the PML-N. If there is truth to these latest allegations, Memon’s promise that his party will ring in the end of the Nawazistan era offers little hope. For the people want change in governance, their everyday lives and not the usual change of faces.

This relentless political tangoing between the two major parties risks handing the PTI some moral advantage. While Imran Khan’s promise to root out corruption in 90 days of being elected to the centre appears a spectacular case of political hyperbole — he has the benefit of an unproven record on his side.

Central to the question of accountability is strengthening key institutions such as the NAB and anticorruption agencies in provinces by making them independent of executive interference, providing additional resources and expertise and instituting a culture of transparency. Corruption cases have been used as bargaining instruments by all governments and this needs to change. *