Open any newspaper. Kulsoom Nawaz Sharif feigns piety, head covered, eyes down, hands cupped, she says she seeks only Allah’s justice. She mocks politics: “I am just a housewife, my husband is innocent, I don’t want to lead the Muslim League”. She taunts the generals: “My popularly elected husband was ousted by a retired and vindictive general, Nawaz Sharif tried to cement divisions in the army created by a gang of four”. She woos the international community: “Nawaz Sharif didn’t sanction Kargil”. She upbraids the press: “Stand up for our rights, Nawaz didn’t know what Saifur Rahman was doing”. She berates the judiciary: “The hijacking judgment was engineered”. And she insults the intelligence of the people of Pakistan: “Nawaz was not corrupt, he was a democrat, he had found a solution to the Kashmir problem”. Congratulations Begum Sahiba. You’ve come of age.
Across the seas, another woman whose husband is also in a Pakistani prison continues to brazen it out. Benazir Bhutto says she did not wrong while in power. Out of office, she mocks the law by being a fugitive from justice.
Despite the enormity of their sins, we can either exhort General Pervez Musharraf to track down Bhutto, Sharif et al and show no mercy. Or we can suggest an approach based on truth and reconciliation.
The first approach hasn’t yielded any dividends so far. Ms Bhutto was charged with corruption and misconduct and ousted in 1990 by the establishment. Her husband was imprisoned and her party hounded to the wall by Nawaz Sharif. But the people of Pakistan shrugged off these charges and brought her back to power in 1993. She was thrown out again in 1996, this time by her handpicked president. Her husband was again imprisoned but this time the couple was convicted by Nawaz Sharif for corruption. Yet her political party has made her chairperson for life, the press prints her utterances prominently and she could be a political force in less restricted circumstances.
Nawaz Sharif’s case is similar. He was ousted in 1993 by the establishment for creating a constitutional deadlock. His brother and father were imprisoned for corruption by Ms Bhutto. But the people of Pakistan voted him back into power with a vengeance in 1997. He was kicked out again last year, this time by his handpicked army chief. He and other family members are in prison. They face stiff penalties for hijacking, kidnapping, corruption, etc. Yet his political party sticks to him, the international community intercedes on his behalf, the press gives him front-page treatment and he would be a political force in less captive circumstances.
Both politicians have clearly betrayed the trust of the people. But they are not yet history. This may be because no new political leader has been able to spark the imagination of the people and sweep these two politicians aside in the battle for hearts and minds. But it is also because people are reluctant to repose unquestioning faith in the army’s ability to deliver the promised land. After all, if the two political parties have wallowed in corruption and incompetence, the third political party (the army) which has ruled Pakistan for half the time since independence has provoked three costly wars and presided over its dismemberment. Worse, the army seems to be floundering again and this has created misgivings about the fate of our state and civil society. International isolation, coupled with political and economic ineptitude, is no recipe for sustainable development or democracy.
Should we seek the goal of sustainable democracy rather than try to simply restore it? Instead of asking the third political party to crush the leaders of the other two, can we consider a process of national reconciliation among all three parties on the basis of truth? By truth we mean the truth of the allotment of evacuee property, the truth of Liaqat Ali Khan’s murder, the truth of the Hamoodur Rehman Commission Report, the truth of the trial of Z A Bhutto, the truth of the US$ 10 billion Afghan pipeline in the 1980s, the truth of the Ojri camp explosions, the truth of the F-16 and Mirage commissions, the truth of the Bahawalpur aircrash, the truth of the rigged 1990 elections, the truth of General Asif Nawaz’s death, the truth of the Motorway and Yellow cab kickbacks, the truth of the LDA/CDA plots, the truth of the Swiss bank accounts, the truth of the IPP tariffs, the truth of various privatisations and SRO revisions, the truth of the Surrey mansion, the truth of the Augusta submarines and French frigates, the truth of the Ukrainian tanks, the truth of the London flats, the truth of the defaulted bank loans and write-offs, the truth of the Kargil affair, etc.
If Nawaz Sharif, Benazir Bhutto and the many politicians, bureaucrats, judges, businessmen and generals who have plundered and wrecked our beloved country are ready to tell the truth, atone for their sins and agree to return Pakistan’s looted wealth, the people may reconcile with them. But if they persist in their great deception, they should all be hauled over the coals and no mercy should be shown to them.