Pakistan in Media

The lengths politicians will go to in order to save themselves are astonishing. Still more astounding is their lack of regard for dignity – whether their own or that of their nation. Since the NRO controversy broke out in full earnest last month, the episodes involving desperate efforts by those affected by the scuttling of the law to prevent the wheels of justice moving freely have accelerated. The latest such incident has unfolded in Geneva, where the Pakistani high commissioner to the UK, accompanied by a former deputy attorney general, took away a carton-load of documents related to cases under the NRO. The two men had flown into Switzerland for the purpose; and in scenes played out by Geo TV – which would have been comic had they not been tragic in terms of the crimes of corruption committed by the powerful – refused to answer questions about what they were doing.

However, there is nothing very mysterious about this. As this newspaper and Geo TV have reported, a visit was paid to a Swiss lawyer who held the documents pertaining to corruption cases against Pakistani politicians. These cases had been dropped from the Swiss courts on the orders of the Pakistan government under then president Pervez Musharraf when he put the NRO into effect. We all know that President Asif Ali Zardari is the key person behind all this. Quite apart from his alleged corruption – of which ample evidence is said to exist even if the Swiss documents have been destroyed – one must also wonder at his frightening lack of acumen. Evidently Mr Zardari has failed to realize that actions such as the one in Geneva mean only that he is held in still greater contempt by the people of Pakistan. More and more among us wonder how we can continue with a man around whom so much controversy swirls as our head of state. The brave efforts to defend the president, essentially on the basis of the fact that he was democratically elected, are waning in view of his total inability to change his image or to learn from past mistakes. Indeed, by misusing the powers he possesses, to dispatch government officials to seize materials from lawyers, Mr Zardari demonstrates what appears to be a complete unwillingness to change his ways. It is also obvious that the president is a scared man. Perhaps he sees the net closing in around him. He has in fact been helping to draw it tighter through antics such as the Grand Document Snatch in Geneva. One day we may laugh at these events. Today we must mourn at being governed by leaders who think only of themselves and are willing to do almost anything to save their own necks.