[Pakistan has long been plagued by corruption, driving away foreign investment and siphoning unpaid taxes into the distant bank accounts of bureaucrats and politicians. It is often listed by monitoring groups as among the world’s most corrupt nations, and Pakistanis complain of having to pay bribes to obtain permits, secure government jobs or avoid being jailed for months on petty charges.]
By Shaiq Hussain and Pamela
Constable
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Former Pakistani
president Asif Ali Zardari arrives for his bail appeal at Islamabad
High Court on June 10.
(Farooq Naeem/AFP/Getty Images)
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ISLAMABAD
— Last August, Pakistani
Prime Minister Imran Khan came to power after a campaign in which he blasted
the country’s two major political dynasties as corrupt and vowed to clean up
the graft and money-laundering that had long tainted the ruling elite.
Last week, with the arrests of former
president Ali Asif Zardari from the Pakistan People’s Party and a nephew of
former prime minister Nawaz Sharif from the Pakistan Muslim League, Khan
signaled he was starting to fulfill that pledge after being preoccupied for
months by economic crises.
“The pressure to stabilize the economy has
been relieved. Now I will go after these corrupt politicians,” Khan said in a
speech June 10. He said he would form a commission to investigate how former
leaders from both parties had plunged the nation into debt.
“No one will dare leave the country in
tatters ever again,” he declared.
Pakistan has long been plagued by corruption,
driving away foreign investment and siphoning unpaid taxes into the distant
bank accounts of bureaucrats and politicians. It is often listed by monitoring
groups as among the world’s most corrupt nations, and Pakistanis complain of
having to pay bribes to obtain permits, secure government jobs or avoid being
jailed for months on petty charges.
With the private economy too small to
accommodate the fast-growing populace of 210 million and Pakistan
diplomatically isolated by persistent charges of harboring Islamic terrorists,
millions of educated Pakistanis are jobless, and public frustration has peaked.
Leaders from the People’s Party and the
Muslim League have long accused each other of corruption, especially in
election years. Voters have often switched loyalties, but little institutional
or legal reform has resulted. Khan, who ran and won as a reformist outsider,
raised fresh public hopes for change.
But current leaders of those parties have
denounced Khan’s actions as a witch hunt. They charge that he is using the
federal anti-corruption agency as a cudgel to attack his rivals and deflect
criticism of his policy failures.
“The government has arrested political
leaders to divert the attention of the masses from its economic terrorism,”
Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, the former president’s son and People’s Party chairman,
said last week. He said there was “no difference” between Khan’s government and
that of former military ruler Pervez Musharraf, who seized power in 1999 and
ruled for nearly a decade.
Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, a former prime minister
from the Muslim League, denounced the June 10 arrest of Sharif’s nephew Hamza
Shahbaz on charges of hiding financial assets, saying it had added “a new black
chapter” to Pakistan’s history. “We are not afraid of accountability, but you
need to bring evidence prior to framing charges against anyone.”
The National Accountability Bureau went after
Nawaz Sharif last year, prosecuting him for hiding wealth through overseas
dealings including luxury London apartments, after Supreme Court hearings in
which Khan, then running for office, was his major accuser.
The protracted legal battle severely damaged
Sharif’s party. The ex-premier, 69, was convicted in December and is now
serving a seven-year prison term. Next, the bureau pursued his brother Shahbaz
Sharif, who is out on bail in a corruption case. Last week it pounced on his
nephew, a budding party leader.
Now, the watchdog bureau has trained its
sites on the People’s Party, detaining Zardari, 63, the widower of former prime
minister Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated in 2007. The controversial
billionaire has been accused and jailed repeatedly — though never convicted —
in multiple corruption and kickback cases since the 1990s, earning him the
indelible nickname “Mr. Ten Percent.”
Zardari, newly charged with maintaining fake
bank accounts abroad, was taken from his house in the capital as chanting
supporters gathered outside; his sister, a provincial legislator, also was
arrested. Analysts wondered whether the spate of arrests was a sign of overdue
accountability or partisan vendetta. Khan insisted that the accountability
bureau is entirely independent.
Bhutto Zardari has announced plans for mass
protests, and after decades of rivalry, the People’s Party and the Muslim
League are now allies of circumstance. But some observers said the younger
party leaders lack the skills and experience to mount a credible revolt.
“The opposition parties can create some
headache for the Khan government, but I don’t see any chance of sustained
agitation that could dislodge it,” said Hasan Askari Rizvi, a political analyst
in Lahore. “People believe both parties have been involved in corruption in the
past. I don’t see them coming out on the streets for them.”
Still, despite Khan’s confident rhetoric,
Pakistan remains in dire economic straits. Mired in debt and record currency
devaluations, his government has been forced to borrow huge sums from China and
Saudi Arabia and negotiate a $6 billion bailout package from the International
Monetary Fund.
Last week, Khan’s first annual budget was
criticized for burdening the impoverished population with belt-tightening
measures, including increased taxes and consumer prices.
Whatever the legal outcome of the charges
against the Sharif and Zardari families, their fall has badly weakened both
parties, which alternately led Pakistan during much of its turbulent 70-year
history as a struggling democracy bedeviled by military intervention.
“Both Nawaz and Zardari are in prison, they
are ill, and it’s almost the end of their era,” said Ayaz Amir, a former Muslim
League legislator and commentator. Both parties, he said, “are in serious
trouble. They can do nothing but issue statements.”
Farhatullah Babar, a longtime People’s Party
politician, said he doubts the new cases against Zardari will be able to “stand
the judicial test.” But the far greater concern, he said, is where the economic
woes and political schisms will leave the country.
“Inflation is in double digits, and people
are being thrown out of jobs,” Babar said. “Whether the government or the
opposition has the last hurrah, the people have already suffered much.”
Constable reported from Kabul.
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