Prime Minister of Pakistan Mian Nawaz Sharif has, for all practical purposes, pleaded guilty of the charges against him of having laundered cash away from his country to buy companies and properties abroad. This he has done quite unintentionally by using every possible way and means of blocking any investigation into the allegations that surfaced against his family directly and his ownself indirectly with the leak of the notoriously famous Panama Papers. By now he could easily have been absolved of all charges of hiding assets and laundering money had he himself taken initiative in setting up a transparent and unquestionably credible procedure of thorough investigations. This he would almost certainly have done if he had given himself even 50% chance of avoiding indictment.
He knew right away that he was in a fix. Precisely why he rushed to appear in a nationwide broadcast announcing that he was offering himself and his family for accountability but through a commission of his choice and ToRs of his liking.
Since that broadcast on the 5th of April, two days after the great leak, the Prime Minister and his cronies have been running from pillar to the post trying to convince the Nation that the Panamagate is nothing but a heinous conspiracy hatched by Imran Khan to target the Sharif family for the crime of putting the country on road to an unprecedented turnaround. In this conspiracy the international community as well as the other opposition parties of the country have joined hands with Israel’s ‘proven agent’ in Pakistan — Mr Imran Khan!
The irony is that the clowns surrounding the prime minister who aggressively regard themselves ministers advisers and consultants etc have started believing that the Mayfair flats and the Sharifs-owned offshore companies don’t even exist and or a fabrication of Imran Khan’s ‘sinister’ mind.
Now a point has arrived in this sordid affair where the Opposition led by Chaudhry Aitzaz Ahsan, a legal expert of no ordinary dimensions, has announced that, unless the PM and his cronies deviate into sense, the Opposition will have no other option except to pay heed to Imran Khan’s option of going to the streets.
The streets brought the fall of Ayub Khan. Then of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto.