April 10, 2016
With the Panama Papers, Nawaz Sharif’s legitimacy
on matters of national security will continue to decline.
The
scale of tax avoidance and money laundering revealed in the Panama Paper leaks run into the several hundreds of
billions of dollars and contains the details and names of hundreds of powerful
and influential people from across the world. The impact of these revelations
is already visible: mass protests in Iceland have forced the country’s prime
minister into resignationafter disclosures about his offshore dealings
became public through these leaks.
The
names of over 200 Pakistanis, including the current
prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, have also figured in these leaks. Allegations of
tax evasion, fraud, and money laundering have marred Sharif’s political career
since the beginning. The Independent in 1998 published a piece which
stated, “The investigation into Mr. Sharif and his family was originally
commissioned in 1993 by an interim government, after Mr. Sharif’s dismissal as
prime minister, which asked the agency to investigate 13 separate allegations
of corruption and money laundering through overseas bank accounts.”
According
to these leaks, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s close family has made millions of
dollars of investments in a number of offshore companies. Just hours after
these revelations, Sharif addressed the nationand promised
appropriate review while denying that any of his family members were involved
in any kind of corruption.
Even
after coming to power with a heavy mandate, Sharif has not been able to rule
successfully. The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Isnaaf party’s four-month long protests in Islamabad in 2014, which ended only after the
military’s intervention as a mediator, took away any semblance of civilian
supremacy over the army. A few weeks ago, the former military chief, Pervez
Musharraf, who was put on an historic trial for treason by Sharif, silently
left the country.
For the
prime minister, the timing of these allegations could not have been worse. The
PTI again has promised to launch another wave of protests against the federal government if it
fails to form an independent commission to prosecute the allegations made in
Panama leaks. Meanwhile, the army has unilaterally launched a military
operation in Punjab without even asking for consent from the provincial government, which is run by
the prime minister’s younger brother, Shahbaz Sharif.
The
prime minister has proved to be an ordinary politician: one who has has neither
courage nor the political will to provide leadership to the country. “Nawaz
Sharif has frittered away his opportunities. He has proved to be a hopelessly
incompetent leader, neither strong enough to initiate badly needed reforms nor
sophisticated enough to deal with the country’s well-oiled military machine,” said Ahmad Rashid.
For the
most part, Sharif’s third tenure as prime minister has been marred by
allegations of mass corruption. Moreover, Sharif has been soft on extremists.
Consequently, the leadership space left by the prime minister has been filled
by the chief of army staff, General Raheel Sharif, who has been tough on
extremism. While the military chief ordered the execution of Mumtaz Qadri, who
in 2011 murdered Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer, the federal government a week
ago could not clear the capital of a handful of Islamist protesters celebrating
Qadri. Instead, the government gave in to many of their demands related to
Pakistan’s controversial blasphemy laws. One of the demands which the
government agreed to was the execution of Asia Bibi, whose case is pending in the
courts in a blasphemy-related offense.
These
revelations, regardless of their merit, will further limit the prime minister’s
say in matters related to national security and foreign policy. For the
remaining two years of his tenure, Nawaz Sharif is likely to serve as a
ceremonial head of government, with actual power residing in the hands of the
military and opposition parties.
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