Daily Times

No matter who prompted him to issue such dire threats to no matter who, Senator Nehal Hashmi needs to be taken to task for what he did. If he had done the mischief on his own its consequences for him should be even severer. In case he was prompted then the prompter should be identified without fail and meted out exemplary punishment.

Mouthing such menacing language publicly allegedly against the three-member supreme court bench hearing the Panama case and/or the six-member Joint Investigation Team (JIT) tasked to find answers to the 11 questions that the former had posed should be unacceptable under any circumstances.

One had expected the Supreme Court bench in question to dispose of the case on merit on the very day the Senator was called in to explain his position. Surprisingly it was not to be so. The accused has been allowed more than a week to prepare his defence but he is seemingly using it solely to hog the media limelight for what it is worth which he is doing with great relish displacing from air space more important national and international news.

Those who have not taken their eyes off the ball since the JIT started its investigations despite so many immaterial media distractions find it difficult to believe that the investigators would be able to complete the exercise in time. They seem to go by what the JIT has succeeded in achieving in the first 30 days of the 60-day limit imposed by the bench — not much.

In order to put the things in the correct perspective sans the media distractions let us recall here the questions asked by the bench: 1. How were Gulf Steel Mills set up? 2. What happened with the returns of Gulf Steel Mills? 3. How did the money earned from Gulf Steel Mills ended up in Jeddah, Qatar and Britain? 4. What were the reasons of selling Gulf Steel Mills? 5. Did the young Hassan Nawaz and Hussain Nawaz have resources enough to buy flats in London in the 90s? 6. Is the Qatari letter a reality or just a fabricated letter? 7. Who is the real owner of Nelson and Nescol? 8. How did the bearer certificates of the offshore companies turn into flats? 9. Where did Hassan Nawaz get the money from for a flagship company and business in London, while there is no transaction recorded to prove the flow of money? 10. How was Hill Metal Company set up? 11. How did Hussain Nawaz gift millions of rupees to his father and where did the money for those gifts come from?

Ruthless accountability of top office holders in countries practicing democracy is not a new normal. But in Pakistan this is happening for the first time. In the past such accountability was reserved for out of power politicians

The answers for the first four questions, it is presumed, has been obtained in the very first couple days of the investigations from Tariq Shafi, cousin of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

The question number six regarding the Qatari letter on which perhaps hinges the entire case of money trail has continued to remain unanswered one way or the other. The exchange of letters between the JIT and the Qatari Prince in question have only added to the confusion about whether or not the Prince is willing to answer JIT’s questions in person. The answers to questions number seven and eight would flow from the personal evidence that is anticipated to be provided by the Qatari Prince.

The JIT seems to have devoted most of its time in the first 30 days to trying to find answers to questions number 5, 9, 10 and 11 from Hussain Nawaz and Hassan Nawaz. This attempt has, however, turned the whole affair into a tamasha. The comings and goings of the Prime Minister’s sons to and from the Judicial Academy — the temporary Thana the JIT has been using for interrogation — has spun into a raucous media spectacle of pathetic proportions.

This spectacle accompanies opposing narratives, one from the PML-N lackeys full of sob-sister stories of imaginary victimhood and the other mostly from PTI puppeteers calling for immediate resignation of the Prime Minister as according to them he has been found guilty as charged. Along with this go the visuals of the PM’s sons shown accompanying a huge crowd of supporters usually led by known PML-N hecklers.

In the first place, since the two youngsters — Hussain and Hassan — do not hold any political office in Pakistan and have their businesses outside Pakistan they are not legally obliged to appear before the Pakistani JIT, especially to answer question number 11, but for being the sons of the Prime Minister.

Also, since they have already said that they owned the flats in question there was no need to grill them for hours together. All that the JIT needed for them to produce were authentic documents to back their claims. In case they produced the said documents, end of story. If not, the story goes back to the bench. As simple as that.

There seems to be some kind of inexplicable reluctance on the part of the JIT to invite Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Finance Minister Ishaq Dar for interrogation, as one presumes the two hold all the information that the JIT requires.

While the JIT seems to be going around in circles, the PML-N has been using the opportunity to undermine the credibility of the interrogators using the ‘leaked’ picture of Hussain Nawaz and the WhatsApp related ‘fake’ news.

Those in the opposing camp, who interpret this seemingly counterfeit campaign of the PML-N against the JIT as a panicky response of a guilty party, perhaps rightly, seem to be smelling victory. But let this camp be warned that it would have nothing to complain about if at the end of the day the same JIT were to give a clean chit of health in favour of its tormentor — the Sharif family. However, even if that were to happen on technical grounds, by the time the case would come to its logical or illogical end, it would have cost the ruling party dearly in terms of politics. Ruthless accountability of top office holders in countries practicing democracy is not a new normal. But in Pakistan this is happening for the first time. In the past such accountability was reserved for out of power politicians.

Still, to our good fortune there are no signs on the horizon of what is called judicial coup in the making and so far neither has the Army shown any inclination to step out of the barracks to ‘set things right’ in its own parade ground style.

The writer is a senior journalist based in Islamabad. He served as the Executive Editor of Express Tribune until 2014