The writing has been on the wall a long time, but the corrupt elite closed its eyes and hoped it would go away, while the people, so often betrayed, read it but were hesitant to lend this writing any credibility. With the Army Chief’s recent address to some senior media persons, from which the meat of a recent article in Daily Times [attached below] seems to be drawn, it seems that finally the high criminal fraternity of the country is about to get its comeuppance. Finally, it seems that the days of playing god by this crime-infested “upper” layer of society is about to receive a long overdue lesson in humility.
From the Chief’s remarks it seems there really are no favourites; that the accountability will continue. And that it will proceed from the high to the low. And it shall do so without discrimination.
This is as it should always have been. So perhaps Shahbaz Sharif will also pay. And perhaps Choudhary Qamar Zaman [ex-Chairman NAB] , that most mercenary of civil servants, shall also be netted. This will be an extremely important barometer for the credibility of the process. Without it the whole exercise and will become plagued with doubt, and will go down badly with the General’s own command, what to speak of the people at large. One hopes that later Zardari, Achackzai, Asphandyar and Mullah Fazal, arch crooks and despoilers of the state, will follow and pay for their crimes.
Thus far, however it is mere hope that the state will take a new course, because the crooks have shown no fear of the process of accountability that is underway, and they continue to loot the state. Quite brazenly the disgraced former Prime Minister continues to enjoy state protocol and security paid for by the very state he is resolutely trying to undermine. And no questions have been asked on this account. The message this sends out is not a good one.
But for the first time in many long and hopeless years, hopes of accountability seem to have been rekindled, and cracks are appearing in the unassailable self-confidence of those who firmly believed just months ago, in their unchallengeable right to rule this country to ruin. Now, their statures reduced to their ignominious reality, they have begun to appear as the ninnies they always were– nervous and frail.
One hopes though that in the coming weeks, General Bajwa will include mega corruption among national security imperatives. The mechanism to take notice of such corruption can be evolved later. At the very earliest however due and formal notice must be taken of this lethal cancer which has brought the country to its knees without the enemy having fired a single shot.
But for the moment there is hope again. And in my book the three people most responsible for giving us this new hope are the Chief Justice, the Army Chief, and Imran Khan. And the thing they have in common is that none of them can be bought. This is where the elaborate super structure of inviolable immunity, built by the auctioneers of Pakistan, hit the cliffs and wrecked itself. And from this wreckage new hopes have arisen.
The first realization of these new hopes will become evident when the intent to commit theft will once again be accompanied by fear. When that happens, we shall be able to say that the country has begun to change course. As a first step towards this, all the top crooks should be put on ECL. Then they should be tried and sentenced without fear or favour. It is then that we shall be justified in saying that the country has been saved and has changed course. That will the time to look once more to a future of promise.