If I had been the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Pakistan I would have taken ‘suo moto’ action against Prime Minister Mian Nawaz Sharif regarding a huge crime that has been committed and continues to be committed.
It was on the 3rd of April last year that the Panama Papers scandal hit the headlines the worldover and the names of Sharif family members were mentioned in the context of the secret ownership of offshore companies in Panama.
Sensing that a potentially destructive issue had surfaced quite unexpectedly, Mian Nawaz Sharif appeared on the screen of the PTV an asset of the State of Pakistan to plead his innocence.
The point to be considered here is that it was not the government or the State of Pakistan that had been accused of any wrong-doing. It was an individual named Mian Nawaz Sharif (alongwith his family) who had been mentioned as holder of illicit assets in the form of companies and properties in Panama and London: The accusation quite clearly was that the children of Mian Nawaz Sharif were beneficiaries of the money that could have been and actually had been illegally transferred abroad by MNS during his first tenure as Prime Minister of Pakistan. Meaning thereby that it was an accusation against an individual and his family members.
What was required was a defense by Mian Nawaz Sharif as an individual.
But since the first week of April 2016 Mian Nawaz Sharif has been guilty of using the State resources with unashamed abandon, to defend himself and his family. The state officials have got involved in the case as though, it is the country that has been charged of an offense. The whole country has for a year witnessed the parade of ministers on daily basis appearing before the cameras and acting as the legal team of Mian Nawaz Sharif. Whether it be Rana Sanaullah the Punjab Minister of Law, or Khwaja Saad Rafique the Federal Minister for Railways, or Abid Sher Ali or Maryam Aurangzeb, or Tarif Afzal Chaudhry, or Talal Chaudhry or Danyal Aziz or Zubair Umar or Khwaja Asif— the entire government of Pakistan has made the defense of a single family their national duty. It will be interesting to know how much the taxpayers of Pakistan have paid to the legal teams engaged by the Sharif family to pull it out of the quagmire of Panama case.
The daring with which Sharif family has used the State resources to build its defense is astonishing. If I had been the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Pakistan I would have lost no time in issuing a ‘show cause’ notice to a man named Mian Nawaz Sharif.
- Latest
- Trending
