Pakistan’s once iconic cricketer and now a charismatic politician, Imran Khan, has a people’s- favourite punch line that he rarely fails to repeat at his public rallies: ‘In Pakistan, it’s only the petty thieves that go to jail while big thieves thrive in politics and become President and Prime Minister.’ That Imran’s rhetoric isn’t baseless has just been vindicated in spades: Asif Ali Zardari, arguably Pakistan’s most notorious and corrupt politician — who rose to become its President and served out a full five-year term— has been exonerated of bribery and corruption charges in a famous case of kick-backs he received in millions of dollars from a Swiss firm, Kotechna, which had been commissioned, on his recommendation, to watch over customs duties paid on imports into Pakistan. Zardari’s clean chit comes from an anti-corruption watch-dog called the National Accountability Bureau, or the NAB.
But political pundits have long argued that NAB is itself a corrupt outfit and, thus, part of the problem and not solution. Moreover, the man overseeing NAB is an appointee of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif; and Sharif is suspected by many to have entered into an ‘unholy alliance’— a compact of the corrupt — that obliges the confederates to not inconvenience or harass each other when it comes to their money loot. Cynics, citing examples like this latest ‘license-to-loot’ handed to Zardari, put their own poetic spin on the odious game of ‘loot-and-thrive’ going on with impunity in Pakistan and remonstrate that one can get away with murder in the ‘Land of the Pure.’ This isn’t some romantic’s flight of fancy imagination but a fact of life in Pakistan where getting away with murder, literally, has the sanction of law.
Pakistan has on its legal statutes, since 1990, the Islamic Sharia (jurisprudence) Law of Qisas (retribution) and Diyat (blood money) that allows murderers to pay, in cash or kind, the family members, or blood relatives, of their victims in order to avoid due punishment befitting their crime. However, Nawaz government is now focusing its gaze on amending the law because it has been abused, over the past quarter century, by the wealthy and the powerful who have been getting away with murder in the convenient cloak of this law.
In the pristine spirit of the Islamic Sharia, the element of blood money kicks in only if, and when, a person accused of murder has been found guilty and sentenced to die for his crime. The Islamic law, in that situation, allows the blood relatives of the victim to demand money to let the murderer escape the death penalty. However, in Pakistan this principle of money for blood has been misinterpreted, with mal-intent, for the convenience of the rich and the powerful. According to a recently-unveiled study, murderers with money, or their relatives, in league with police, bribe, cajole or bamboozle the murder victim’s relatives to settle the issue before the case reaches a court of law.
The study says the number of murder cases cancelled before they were brought to courts has more than doubled in the years since 1990. Even when a case is brought for trial, an out-of–court settlement has become a norm, which translates into the report’s findings that murder conviction rate had plummeted from 29 %, in 1990, to a paltry 12 % in 2000. A recent limelight murder case that hogged the air waves and media headlines in 2012 was that of a young 20-year-old man, Shehbaz, who was gunned down in broad daylight in an upscale Karachi neighbourhood, right in front of his family home, by another 20-year-old. But the assassin was son of a very wealthy and politically influential Wadera (a landlord) of Sindh, who could boast of links with the then-president Zardari.
The upshot of it all was that the young victim’s family was put, literally, under the boiler-plate pressure to accept blood money, or else? The slain man’s mother encapsulated her agony in these few words which, actually, said mountains: ‘I couldn’t stand it anymore, and I’d to think of the lives of my other children.’ But now the government has decided to take that filthy-rich murderer to court. As Nawaz Sharif’s Special Law Assistant articulated the government’s predicament before the media, “forgiveness is with God; (but) to safeguard the rights of a person is the obligation of the State.” The political government may have belatedly come to recognise its primary obligation — to dispense justice — and the people’s right to demand justice. But if the rich and powerful civilians can twist the law and bend it to their perverse desires, why can’t the most disciplined dispenser of power in the country have its own way? That’s a question simple enough to not tax the intelligence of even a primary school student. The Pakistan army is the biggie of biggies; it’s the most powerful institution in the country and the buck in Pakistan stops at the desk of the military chief and not the PM. So, in fullness of the sense of power-wielding, the military chief, General Raheel Sharif, has quietly, unobtrusively, but effectively staged a soft coup, not really toppling PM Nawaz Sharif but upstaging him at the centre of raw power in Pakistan.
The people of Pakistan know it and, interestingly if not intriguingly, so does the outside world. That is, the outside world that counts for Pakistan and where there is a well-deliberated and educated sense of distribution and dispensation of power in the typical Pakistani context. And what may seem highly unusual, if not disturbing, to some Pakistan’s friends and allies seem to have no qualms about this musical chairs. In the past one year, General Raheel Sharif has, for all intents and purposes, arrogated to himself complete control of Pakistan’s foreign relations, as an adjunct to his known status of the military supremo. In his new role as Pakistan’s ‘External PM’ the general has paid high-visibility visits to the foreign capitals that matter; some more than once in the calendar year, including Washington (twice), London, Beijing, Moscow and, of course, Riyadh (three visits in addition to a recent pilgrimage safari).
That Pakistan’s friendly capitals don’t mind rolling out the red carpet to him is tacit endorsement of his new-fangled status. In London, he was received at 10 Downing Street with all that protocol reserved for a head of government; the only thing missing in his honour-roll was Tea with the Queen at Buckingham Palace. The most bizarre aspect of this is that Nawaz seems reconciled to this soft coup. In a cynical sense, it leaves him free to poach with impunity on his home turf and plunder. Realistically, he knows that the general has star-billing with the masses, because of the obvious failures of the political government.
The bottom line is that Pakistanis aren’t ready to give Nawaz Sharif the luxury of eating his cake and have it, too. Democracy, bemoan.
The author is a former Pakistan diplomat.
Email: k_k_ghori@hotmail.com