Sharif in ‘liquid oxygen'; Sit back and watch, Indians

— By Sushant Sareen

NOW that he has his back to the wall, the last thing Sharif will want to do is defy the army and seek some sort of rapprochement with India. Plus, the fact that the judges have appointed members of the Military Intelligence and the ISI to the JIT means that there is virtually no possibility of any positivity in the offing towards India.

A dialogue of the iconic Bollywood villain of yesteryears, Ajit, sums up the predicament in which Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif finds himself after the Pakistan Supreme Court ruling in the Panama Papers scandal that centred around the allegedly, but also apparently, unexplained and illegal sources of money used for buying expensive properties in London. Ajit's favourite method of torture was to throw someone in ‘liquid oxygen', because ‘liquid' wouldn't let the man live and oxygen wouldn't let him die! The Pakistani Supreme Court has done something similar with Nawaz Sharif: It hasn't disqualified him for not being able to explain the money trail for the London properties (oxygen), but it has instituted a Joint Investigation Team (JIT) to investigate the source of the money and whether the money was proceeds of corruption (liquid). In other words, while Nawaz Sharif has escaped by the skin of his teeth – two of the five judges ruled in favour of his disqualification, while the other three, even though not convinced by the cock-and-bull story given by Nawaz Sharif's lawyers, felt the matter needed further inquiry – the Damocles' sword continues to hang over his head.

The case was a virtual political minefield, not just for the litigants but also for the judiciary. The expectations attached with the verdict created a huge amount of pressure on the judges. They couldn't afford to let the Prime Minister go scot free on the basis of dodgy and dubious documents that were presented in his defence, and they couldn't despatch an elected Prime Minister in a cavalier and arbitrary manner because of its destabilising impact on the polity and the unintended consequences of such a drastic ruling. Hence, they passed a ruling that keeps their reputation intact and still sends out a loud and clear message that even the most powerful people cannot evade accountability.

Even so, the judges have given both the defendant (Nawaz Sharif) and the petitioners (opposition) something to celebrate. Nawaz Sharif's camp is happy not only because they survived but also because the can of justice has been kicked further down the road (the properties first came to the fore over two decades back and since then have often cropped up whenever anyone wanted to dig up dirt on the Sharif family); the opposition has taken heart from the scathing remarks passed by the judges who ruled against Nawaz Sharif, and also by the fact that he wasn't given a clean chit even by the majority of judges who have initiated an inquiry against him. Of course, to the extent that the judiciary has disqualified other lawmakers on far lesser evidence, and even on mere technicalities, but has balked at holding Nawaz Sharif to the same standard, would certainly have disappointed the opposition who were expecting the Prime Minister to be politically guillotined by the Supreme Court. That might still happen in the future if the JIT investigation goes against the Sharifs. But chances are that, if due process is followed, then Nawaz Sharif is safe at least till after the general elections due in August next.

Even though the judges might have found the middle ground in their judgment, there are still serious political implications that will unfold over the next few days, weeks and months. Nawaz Sharif's, and indeed that of rest of the Sharif family's, carefully cultivated reputation as hard working business family, which hasn't used politics to enrich itself and which has been pretty much teflon-coated because no corruption charge has ever stuck on them, has been severely dented by the extremely adverse ruling of the minority judges. Already the opposition is baying for his blood and demanding that he step aside until he is able to clear his name in the JIT report. According to the opposition, prima facie the Supreme Court has found the Prime Minister to be untruthful and dishonest, which under the Pakistani constitution makes him unfit to hold any public office. There are now plans to build a political movement around this issue, which if nothing else will put some wind in the sails of the opposition going into the next general elections that will be held in slightly over a year from now.

A lot will of course depend on how the case unfolds from here on. As things stand, it seems highly improbable that the JIT will be able to dig out any cast iron evidence against the Sharifs in the next couple of months. Not even Nawaz Sharif's bête noire, Gen Pervez Musharraf, managed to get irrefutable evidence against Nawaz Sharif and his family in the nearly nine years that he ruled as a dictator. Once the investigations are complete, even if they are against Nawaz Sharif, the judiciary could either send him packing, or else if they follow due process, get a reference filed against him. In the latter case, the meandering legal system will take over, which in turn means that it will be years before any final judgment disqualifying Nawaz Sharif and his extended family. One outlier in this whole scenario is that immense pressure is brought to bear so that instead of the prosecution trying to prove Nawaz Sharif guilty, he has to prove himself innocent by producing the money trail and documentary evidence to back his claim that the London properties were not the fruits of corruption.

Politically, for now at least, although the reputation of the Sharifs has been sullied, their politics might still survive this grievous blow because how big an issue corruption will be in the Pakistan elections remains a matter of conjecture. Over more than three decades, the Sharifs have put in place a solid patronage network in the heartland of Pakistan – Punjab. Add to this their party machinery, and it will take some doing to defeat them at the hustings. Even if perchance the Sharif family is unable to contest the elections, they could still manage to get their man to be the next Prime Minister, provided of course that their party doesn't collapse. But the biggest advantage they have is that their opposition is just not able to get its act together, neither organisationally, nor politically. The main challenger, Imran Khan, is tall on talk but doesn't have the political brains to steal a march over the wily Sharifs. Therefore, the odds are that despite this huge setback, Nawaz Sharif will still win the next election.

As far as India is concerned, it makes little difference whether Nawaz Sharif survives or ends up on a stake. The people who call the shots on India are the army. Even when Nawaz Sharif wasn't in trouble, there was little he did or could do to normalise relations with India. All he did then was make self-serving offers of talks, which were neither serious nor sincere because the terms of these talks were simply unacceptable to India. Now that he has his back to the wall, the last thing he will want to do is defy the army and seek some sort of rapprochement with India. Plus, the fact that the judges have appointed members of the Military Intelligence and the ISI to the JIT means that there is virtually no possibility of any positivity in the offing towards India. Therefore, India needs to sit back and watch the political drama that will unfold over the next few months in Pakistan without shedding any tears or sweating over the fate of the Pakistani Prime Minister.
The author is Senior Fellow, Vivekananda International Foundation. Views expressed are personal