Daily Times

Former Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) Director General (DG) Bashir Memon seems to have realised the error of his ways rather quickly and retracted his statement against the prime minister in something of a hurry. Yet such was the nature of the allegations he hurled at the country’s chief executive and two of his top advisors that his sudden attempt to take the sting out of his own statements only reinforces the need to investigate the whole matter thoroughly. The fact that he felt the need to change his story in only a couple of days implies, for all intents and purposes, that the first statement was false. And unless Memon can somehow prove he was right both times his own actions will only fuel speculation that he was launched.

So without wasting any further time relevant authorities must get to the bottom of this matter for everybody’s benefit. The charges made were very serious, especially since they involved the country’s future Supreme Court chief justice and sitting prime minister. This, needless to say, is very dangerous. Now Memon says that his meeting with the PM, in which he previously alleged that the country’s chief executive ordered him to prepare a case against Justice Isa, actually lasted only a few minutes and no names were mentioned. How will he explain this discrepancy to a judicial commission if one is made to carry out a thorough investigation?

The country’s political discourse is already pretty volatile and without the benefit of further proof one can only draw from this that such antics are meant to keep the political hierarchy at each other’s throats so the incumbent administration has little or no time to tend properly to matters of the state. And that, of course, is meant to hurt them in the next election. A progressive democracy requires all political parties, government and opposition, to work together to keep the political atmosphere as clean as possible. When one is constantly preoccupied with throwing dirt at the other, and the other considers it a moral obligation to reply in kind, it is only the people’s interests that get compromised. One way to stay clear of such controversies is to deal with them sternly according to the law whenever they appear. And the Bashir Memon mystery is just one such controversy. Hopefully it won’t be long before all the facts about this become public. *