Losers celebrate
The forecast was correct. The Panama leaks case judgment is indeed a memorable one. Unlike final verdicts that have winners and losers, this one has produced only category: losers. A truly exceptional achievement.
Let’s start with the Nawaz Sharif camp. The endless celebrations are a mockery of reality apart from being a tool to thumb noses at political opponents. There is little else to be cheerful about. Nawaz Sharif’s survival is akin to a man emerging from an avalanche – bruised, battered and bleeding. The mere idea of a sitting prime minister being probed for potential financial crime and shady money deals by a semi-military joint investigation body should make any decent political head hang in shame.
Two judges declaring him dishonest and the other three reposing zero trust in his word is a body blow.
The questions framed by the majority judgment show how little the prime minister and his sons have done by way of proving their innocence with regard to the properties abroad. The dissenting justices have twisted the knife deeper. Their legal arguments may border on judicial adventurism, but they cut the prime minister to the bone by making an outright case for his disqualification. ‘The Godfather’ example is a scar for life. It is not a badge of honour to distribute sweets about.
More mud will flow his way when the JIT starts its work. The travails and torments of seeing himself under the scorching heat of suspicion and ridicule by the opposition are round the corner. After all, this is what investigation and trials are all about.
The opposition – of all variety – isn’t a winner either. In politics, as in law, possession is the ninth tenth of everything. The PTI, the PPP, the JI along with fringe parties like the PML-Q and forgettable actors like Sheikh Rasheed had all pinned their fancy hopes on Nawaz Sharif being booted out. That they came this close to getting their way is now immaterial. The 57-days delay in the announcement of the judgment led them to inflate their expectations to the point of unreason. Now, days after the judgment, the government is still intact. The prime minister is still in his office. And his daughter, the heir apparent to his legacy (whatever that is), who was the special target of Panama scandal projection in the media, is off the hook. She is not a dependent, say the judges, severing the crucial link the opposition tried to build between her father’s alleged wrongdoing and her role as a conduit for laundering money.
For Imran Khan this has to be another missed (imagined) opportunity to cut a short-cut to the PM House. If Nawaz Sharif is intact as an occupier of the PM house, N-League remains pretty much an unbeatable force in Punjab. Having put their trust in the bench by repeatedly saying that they would accept their judgment, PTI leaders are now confused and conflicted about the split decision. Nothing sums up this state of bewilderment more than the schizophrenic response of distribution of sweets after the verdict, hailing it as historic and then protesting it in the National Assembly by rejecting the JIT.
The opposition’s unanimity of views on the prime minister’s resignation is also ephemeral. The PPP is attacking the N-League because of Asif Ali Zardari’s troubles in Sindh on account of Uzair Baloch’s confessions. Aitezaz Ahsan’s outpouring of objections about the ISI chief’s neutrality seem to be in the context of his larger argument that the JIT investigating the prime minister will mostly comprise compromised men of subservient institutions.
But the real issue is something else. And that relates to the cold war between his boss, Asif Ali Zardari, and state institutions that has erupted after a brief period of co-existence and accommodation. It is not the JIT comprising “subservient institutions” that will probe the prime minister and his sons that is problematic. It is the JIT that has produced Uzair Baloch’s statement that the PPP finds impossible to digest.
There are other fears as well. If there can be a JIT for a sitting prime minister, why can’t there be a JIT for the ex-president to probe his past? That is why the idea of the JIT is being attacked by the PPP, with Aitezaz Ahsan taking the lead in the matter, singing tunes that Asif Ali Zardari is composing from behind the scenes.
These goals are vastly different from the PTI’s, whose sole aim is to smack down the Sharifs. This divergence prevents from there emerging a large and effective nation-wide campaign against Nawaz Sharif on the issue of resignation. The JI pulls no weight on its own. Its Amir Sirajul Haq has been totally clueless in handling national political challenges and has reduced the once critical factor in national politics to a sad spectacle of U-turns and purposeless run-arounds. This essentially means that there is no large-scale turning of the political tables in sight as far the opposition is concerned. The N-League in spite of its abominable governance, its mindless borrow-and-spend sprees and disastrous handling of foreign policy, looks set to stay on. Panama leaks has produced no tsunami. It has just produced ripples which some mad-hatters on the media are desperately trying to turn into a tide. The opposition has lost badly.
No credit is flowing towards the writers of the final verdict either. The bench did its best, we are sure. However, there are obvious and glaring shortcomings in the final outcome of this prolonged legal wrangle. When judges become predictable, there is reason to worry about the kind of reputation they have built for themselves. From the day the proceedings ended about two months ago, it was clear who would go for the throat of the Sharifs (and why) and who would stay within the ambit of the law, no matter how inadequate and below par of public expectations. For some it was going to be ‘innocent till proven guilty’; for others it was ‘guilty even if proven innocent’.
This impression becomes unavoidable when you read the dissenting notes. Showing palpable tilt, the opinion reads like an opinion in a blog, and not a convincing legal discourse from whose womb path-breaking jurisprudence can come to life and walk for decades. One part of the dissenting opinion justifies attending the issue directly for fear of sending the wrong message and in anticipation of some nebulous disaster.
It says: Apart from that if this Court stops short of attending to the issue merely because it involves some disputed or intricate questions of fact then the message being sent would be that if a powerful and experienced prime minister of the country/chief executive of the federation appoints his loyalists as heads of all the relevant institutions in the country which can inquire into or investigate the allegations of corruption, etc against such prime minister/chief executive of the federation then a brazen blocking of such inquiry or investigation by such loyalists would practically render the prime minister/chief executive of the federation immune from touchability or accountability and that surely would be nothing short of a disaster.
Since when have judges started to become hostage to imagined Armageddons and apocalypses? Which book of revelation directs them to worry about sending the right ‘message’ instead of adhering to the boundaries of the law? It is said that in cases involving public interest litigation petitioners must come to the court with clean hands and concrete facts. However, it is seldom realised that on issues involving public interest, judges should also write with clean hands, open minds and concrete facts. Otherwise, they run the risk of being tagged and tainted.
The most unfortunate aspect of the final verdict is that it has yet again split national opinion about the superior courts. The inability of the head of the bench to carry all the judges with him shows a stark failure in developing consensus on core constitutional and legal matters.
Critical questions have been raised on the judges’ neutrality and ability to form a consensus. These questions will come back to haunt the system in the years ahead. For now we can all sit back and watch in utter amazement as all losers celebrate.
The writer is former executive editor of The News and a senior journalist with Geo TV.
Email: syedtalathussain@gmail.com
Twitter: @TalatHussain12
https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/200337-Losers-celebrate
