What a sorry tale the
Panama Leaks make: Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s government and party tries to
land the Supreme Court with an impossibly open ended mandate to investigate
cases of corruption that may include thousands of people; the opposition parties
want to make the investigations Sharif specific. The clear picture emerging is
that everyone denies corruption, alleges it on everyone else, wants everyone
else to be investigated, but not themselves. Clearly, it appears too many
people have too many things to hide.
The
Prime Minister has so far been unwilling or unable to answer some of the
simplest questions arising from the Panama Leaks fiasco, and he and his family,
party and cabinet have remained busy in pointing at others’ offshore companies
and/ or bank loan defaults and/or other instances of shady financial dealings,
insisting that all others also be investigated by any commission that is
formed. The attempt to form a commission with an unbelievably wide mandate,
under a law that renders such commissions as toothless, is not currying any
favours with PMLN voters.
Conversely,
businessmen, opposition leaders from the PPP, PTI, judges and generals have not
escaped Panama, but none is giving transparent answers or explanations of their
own dealings that they expect of the Prime Minister – taking refuge in the fact
that they are not in as high a public office as their target. This too is
disingenuous at best.
What
has become clear, however, is that very few stakeholders are untainted, and
therefore it is very unlikely that anything positive or constructive, like the
beginning of honest accountability, will emerge anytime soon from this scandal.
Having
said the above, there is one player who needs special focus at this time: Mr.
Imran Khan. His, once again, was the loudest and holiest than thou voice, that
led the current charge against the ruling family in an attempt to de-seat the
government. This is not the first time Mr. Khan has attempted taking the moral
high ground and establishing himself as the only ‘honest’ politician on the
face of Pakistan. It must be mentioned here, by the way, that the gent has
never spoken of the instances of massive corruption within the armed forces.
For twenty years he has focused on establishing himself as the anti-Christ to
the ‘politicians’ of Pakistan. And his credulous supporters have largely bought
his narrative, and accepted the idea of his being the alternative to all other
politicians and political parties, because of the moral, financial and
intellectual probity Mr. Khan has convinced them he is the sole paragon of.
Unfortunately,
however, yet again Mr. Khan has been discovered to be no different to those he
paints as evil, corrupt, thieves, morally and intellectually bankrupt. The
instances substantiating this are far too many – but I shall attempt to outline
a few: I remember in the 1990s Mr. Khan began his political career with his
slogan against ‘VIP culture’. The Aitchison and Oxford educated resident of a
palatial Zaman Park property was railing against politicians of being guilty of
living in luxury, indulging in VIP culture and being too distant from the
masses – from the VIP lounge of Lahore airport. When a journalist reminded him
of where he was conducting his presser from, Mr. Khan became speechless for
what seemed an interminable time, before sheepishly uttering, ‘aainda nahi
karoon ga’ (I will not do this again). This, from the wannabe leader who
reviled elitism, but was too elitist to be even registered as a voter when he
contested elections for the very first time, and had to face the embarrassment
of not even being able to vote for himself. The desire to project himself as
very different from who he really is was manifest from his first ever book, in
which he declared he would marry a good, Pakistani, Muslim Pathan woman of his
mother’s choosing, and then went on to wed Jemima Goldsmith.
Mr.
Khan has recently made the laughable claim in one of his innumerable jalsa’s
that he was the only politician jailed by former military dictator General
Pervez Musharraf, taking the falsifying of recent history to previously
unconquered heights. The gentleman remained a sitting member of Pervez
Musharraf’s ‘democratic regime’ till the two fell out over the number of seats
Musharraf was willing to allow him (according to the general) – nor was
Imran Khan ever jailed by the dictator. But he is wont to portray himself as
the true and only champion of truth and democracy – no matter how many little
porkies he needs to tell to do so.
The
one man no one can dispute as being controversial or untruthful, the iconic
social worker Mr. Abul Sattar Edhi, is on record as having disclosed to DAWN
newsgroup, ‘Once, I was approached by General Hamid Gul, Imran Khan and few
intelligence officials, who were conspiring to overthrow Benazir Bhutto’s
second government and wanted me to get involved….. eventually, I was made to
feel threatened enough to temporarily leave the country.’’ His interviews to
different news groups also have him on record as having been threatened with
kidnapping by this same group of people. But Mr. Khan continues to projected
himself as the true democrat, after having been a part of the deep state’s plot
to overthrow Bhutto’s democratically elected government.
Very
recently, in the Islamabad jalsa on the 24th of April, Mr. Khan remained at
pains to establish to his audience as to why he had entered politics despite
having been given more than enough by Allah – and spent the better part of an
hour establishing his ‘eeman’ (faith & piety), his accountability to God,
and his mission to do good for poor Pakistanis being plundered and looted by
‘crocodiles’ (read: the likes of ex-President Zardari and PM Nawaz Sharif whose
families had been found to have offshore companies, whom he has alleged to be
corrupt and tax thieves for years).Like a preacher, he exhorted his audience to
answerability to God – he was yet again claiming loftiness and nobility of
purpose as reasons for entering politics, the dirtiest game in town, without so
much as a nod to the actual origins of his entry into politics: General Hamid
Gul and the intelligence agencies’ plan to overthrow Benazir Bhutto. He went on
to allude to different prophets who battled ‘zulm’
(terror/cruelty/subjugation), in order to paint himself and his followers as
those who are following in the path of the prophets fighting against the
injustices and subjugation of Kafirs, Romans and Jews (present day Zardaris and
Sharifs).Unfortunately, within two weeks of said jalsa broke the story of Mr.
Khan’s own offshore company in which he had held his London property (and
possibly other incomes and assets) up to the point of sale in 2003 to evade
taxes. Unfortunate too, was his less than a month old commandment: ‘Only
reason ppl open offshore accts through Panama is to either hide wealth, esp
ill-gotten wealth, or to evade tax or both.
’The
gent landed in London only the day before yesterday and had to face the press.
And his ‘explanation’ was that it was his ‘right’ (haq) to evade British taxes,
not being a British citizen – not withstanding the fact that his income was of
British origin as was his property located in the same country. But being a non
citizen of a country of which he enjoyed all facilities paid for by other
peoples’ taxes, he felt quite justified in not paying his own fair share.
Similar is the story of his Banigala property on the outskirsts of Islamabad,
which was transferred to him from a ‘benami’ account, once again a tax evasion
and hidden wealth indicator. Hilariously, Mr. Khan did not even disclose his
offshore company in his filing to the ECP in 2002, before selling off the
assets contained within it.
The
only conclusion that can be drawn is that by comparison, Mr. Khan defrauded
public ex-chequers (of at least two different countries) to the extent his own
circumstances and reach allowed. Others may have done so to the tune of
millions or billions. But the difference in scale and his lack of opportunities
does not make him more moral, ethical or upright of character than those he
accuses. The others may have committed corruption on a grand scale, but poor
Mr. Khan has had to be content with doing singers and tent providers out of
their due; whilst others travel in their own planes and helicopters, Mr. Khan
has had to make do with travelling in planes and helicopters of those accused
of defaulting on loans and massive land grabbing – the very same type of
tainted characters he once swore never to allow in his party.
Of
courage and intellectual honesty, would it be suffice to mention that Mr. Khan
is on record as having stated in an interview in India that he cannot name the Taliban
as perpetrators of senseless violence in Pakistan, for that would imperil his
physical existence in Pakistan? The self evident leadership, vision and courage
laid bare by this statement beg the question as to how he claims superiority of
conviction, honesty and messianic zeal over his adversaries.
His
claims of fraudulent elections and stolen mandate of 2013 and 2014 also lie in
tatters, exposed not only by various election tribunals, the Election
Commission of Pakistan, and Supreme Court judges, but also by results of
repeated by-elections across the length and breadth of Pakistan (under His
Umpire’s supervision). Mr. Khan’s dishonest allegations of rigging by opponents
lay exposed with the center stage unfolding, in slow motion, of his conspiracy
to find a short-cut to become Prime Minister, by hook or by crook, with the aid
of a certain Pasha and his cohort of four generals. Here lay exposed once
again, Mr. Khan’s claims to moral, ethical and democratic superiority; here lay
the tatters of his ‘Islamic’ credentials: of not lying, cheating, or catching
the nearest way; of earning one’s due with hard work.
In
short, this is no apology for the PML-N or any other political party, or
character; this is simply an illustrated assertion of why Mr. Khan is not who
he claims to be; of why he is no reasonable alternative to the status quo; of
why he is perhaps the worst alternative the people could choose (or have chosen
for them). Alters and pedestals he has chosen to place himself on are mere
straws that cannot even stand up to scrutiny, leave aside serious blows. Mr.
Khan is the least qualified to propose himself as the saviour he purports to
be.
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