Nawaz Sharif seeks accountability

Editorial: www.thefrontierpost.com/
PML-N leader and former two-time prime minister Nawaz Sharif on Tuesday advised the party’s committee of legal experts preparing recommendations for the forthcoming accountability law that such a law should be so enacted as not to spare the corrupt from penalty nor should it allow exemption to anyone on any ground. Mr Sharif’s assertion can not be disputed because the application of law must be indiscriminate and no person, no matter how influential he or she may be, should escape accountability. Nevertheless, Mr Sharif must also have heard about the golden principle of Islam, which he always claims to be adhering to as part of his faith, that whosoever talks of the other’s accountability, must offer himself for the same first of all. If he does so or has a political will to do so, he will certainly be asked questions as to how had he and his family, including younger brother and Punjab chief minister Shahbaz Sharif, have been able to acquire so huge a wealth as to be reckoned the fourth wealthiest family of Pakistan. This is no secret that the Sharifs total asset was one Ittefaq Foundry when he was appointed as Punjab finance minister by Gen Ziaul Haq’s military regime in 1981. Ayub Khan’s period produced a new class of industrialists and notorious 22 families. But when Gen Zia’s era ended in an air crash, this notoriety was well wedded to “The Gang of Four” and the Sharifs were its leaders with a wealth accumulated to Rs12 billion. Others were the Chaudhries from Gujrat (Rs 3.5 billion), the Saifullahs, in-laws of Ghulam Ishaq Khan, (Rs2 billion) and Dr Basharat Elahi, brother-in-law of Gen Zia, (Rs1.7 billion). All their money came from borrowings from banks and developmental financial institutions and this scam still reverberates minds. Also still in the memory is an ordinance that Punjab governor promulgated in Dec 1988 raising the chief minister’s discretionary fund (then Nawaz Sharif) from Rs100,000 to “any reasonable limit” and that was effective retrospectively (from Dec 1985) because the ordinance was issued to give legal cover to Mr Sharif doling out Rs40 million to journalists, political leaders and others as political bribery. It was not a miracle but a handiwork of the Sharifs that that the House of Ittefaq gave birth to some 30 odd companies within less than a decade to top the list of rich families which later expanded its industrial empire beyond Pakistan to become the fourth business family of Pakistan with assets accumulating to $4billion as against $50 million in the 1990s and merely 10 per cent of it when he became a provincial minister. How more money was added to his huge kitty had a certain link to schemes like the Motorway, the Iqra funds “Apna Ghar” and “Mulk Sanwaro”. Nawaz Sharif certainly owes an explanation for obtaining loans amounting to Rs1.365 billion for Itteafq Foundry, Ittefaq and Brothers sugar mills, from banks and DFIs within six months in his first stint as the country’s chief executive. Besides, he must also take the people in confidence about the purchase of 500 acres of land at Raiwind, naming it Jati Umra, the village the family left in India upon partition. This land was purchased very cheap after the Zia regime, in mid 1990s, declared the area a duty-free industrial zone. Subsequently, this vast residence was so built as to have a helipad, zoo, pastures, agricultural and fruit and vegetable farms. Of late, the house of Hamza Shahbaz, the latest of the family’s political debutant, around Murree is also under the shadow of a scandal of supplying gas at the expense of 16 villages. All this must stand trial soon after the accountability law is enacted.