The latest victim of the Panama paper’s leak might very well be the Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and he owe’s this misfortune to none other than the charismatic opposition leader Imran Khan.
Through much of last decade, I followed the meteoric rise of Khan into the labyrinth of Pakistani politics. With his crystal clean image and an unrelenting campaign against corruption, Khan has certainly earned the low hanging fruit of electoral politics in Pakistan, the educated urban middle class.
Sharif on the other hand is in his third stint as Prime Minister, and he is still being chased by the ghosts of the past. A corruption scandal from the 1990s, charges of money laundering, offshore accounts and property in central London all have come to fore in the latest Mossack Fonseca revelations and the Supreme Court is investigating.
In his own words, Khan is pouncing on this opportunity like a cornered tiger.
Khan has called for a “million man march” into the capital on Nov 2nd, threatening a “lockdown” of the city until Sharif resigns. Sharif who is not directly named in the Panama papers isn’t budging.
And this is where things get convoluted. It is Sharif’s family, his two sons and a daughter, who are named in the Panama papers, not him. It is they who have held offshore companies and properties in central London, not him.
In a nascent democracy like Pakistan, parliamentary politics seldom remains within the confines of the parliament. Khan is known to use massive rallies and street movements to force the agenda; he found himself in a rather precarious position the last time he tried to oust Sharif through brute force. In 2015, his protests demanding Sharif to resign over rigging allegations, turned into a 126 day sit-in, in the capital Islamabad.
While Sharif clung to power, Khan persevered to find yet another opportunity in the Panama papers, and he is making sure this one does not go begging.
Khan is placing his bet on the Supreme Court to see through the facade of offshore property holdings by the Sharif family. His latest march on the capital is in part a strategy to pressurize the top court into taking public outcry as a legitimate variable in deciding the case. After all, it is well a known fact that the Sharif children were in their teens when the London properties were bought.
Although many a political pundits have questioned Khan’s political acumen and have often sentenced him into political oblivion, his party continues to grow in numbers and is most vocal on social media. With just a year to go in the next general elections, to Khan’s advantage, the evidence against Sharif is piling and all the more damning this time around.
Imran Khan checks all the right boxes. An oxford graduate and hugely popular figure prior to his political career, he captained the Pakistan Cricket team for 10 years leading it a World Cup win, beating the colonial masters England in the final. He then turned to philanthropy, building a university and country’s only private cancer hospital.
His party is a cadre of professionals and technocrats. On the contrary Sharif is bankrolled by the corporate behemoths and industrial tycoons. He himself owns sugar and steel mills, while the state owned enterprises have defaulted under his watch.
With the rise of electronic and social media, the Pakistani youth, making 48% of registered voters has never been more aware or more connected.The political dynamic is ripe for change. And change indeed is Khan’s slogan, only if the state institutions, particularly the Supreme Court performs its part and holds Sharif to account.
Historically though, the same courts have subverted the constitution by aligning with the status quo. They have legitimized the rule of military dictators bulldozing all democratic norms. Therefore, it would be foolhardy to expect a very radical outcome.
But this shouldn’t deter Khan; although an ouster or disqualification of Sharif is unlikely Khan’s end game ought to be to prolong the focus of the media lens into the Panama- scandal for as long as possible. Nothing could be more damaging to incumbent party than clouds of corruption hanging over their legacy heading into next year’s general elections.
The momentum is with Khan and Sharif’s end is in sight. There is reason to believe that Khan’s struggle is coming to fruition, much sooner than the naysaying forces of status quo would like to believe.