Politics after Panama

Published December 19, 2016
The writer is a freelance columnist.
The writer is a freelance columnist.

WITH the chief justice’s approaching retirement, and the PTI’s return to the National Assembly, it seems the Panama Papers scandal is turning another corner. Most believe the road immediately following this corner leads to a dead end. Consequently, one can see palpable frustration with the intransigence shown by the government and the caution exhibited by the Supreme Court.

As pointed out in a previous column, the PTI’s most optimistic legal scenario remains the prime minister’s indictment and disqualification. There is, however, no clear-cut path to this outcome. The prime minister is not named in the actual leaks, and his candidacy form from 2013 does not list any of his children as a dependent (though his daughter is tangentially mentioned as one in a wealth statement from 2011). The murky Al-Towfik case ruling from a British court does not name the prime minister either, and mentions only the chief minister, Punjab, and two deceased members of the family. On the face of it, an asset concealment reference is a non-starter.

The second legal avenue is particularly cumbersome: It involves showcasing through a full-scale forensic investigation that the funds were obtained through misappropriation between 1981 and 1994 (when the flats were purportedly purchased). Given pervasively low levels of bureaucratic competence, combined with the inquiry’s retrospective nature and the lack of autonomy offered to investigative bodies, this is nearly impossible to carry out at every stage.


If nothing else, ‘London flats’, ‘shady Qatari prince’, and ‘dubious source of funds’ now carry mass-market recognition.


Finally, some have argued that the issue of contradictory statements offered by the prime minister concerning ownership of the flats provides another route to disqualification. The speech given in parliament earlier this year remains protected under Article 66 of the Constitution. As brazen as it was, it cannot be used as evidence in court. Therefore, any petition seeking a disqualification under Article 62/63 (character appraisal) would have to make use of other contradictions, such as the televised address given in the immediate aftermath of the leaks. This avenue, while a long shot, is still very much in play.

Contrary to what the morally indignant believe, odds are that recent developments may not push the scandal into oblivion. The issue will stay alive in a political sense, if not in a completely legal sense. The PTI’s move to seek redressal from the court has, by default or design, institutionalised the actual scandal. Court proceedings last for four hours in the morning, and provide another eight hours of media-related activity. For the past month and a half, media consumers in the country were made to pay attention to stories submitted by the prime minister’s family, and the problems pointed out in them by the opposition. If nothing else, ‘London flats’, ‘shady Qatari prince’, and ‘dubious source of funds’ now carry mass-market recognition.

This is important because corruption-related scandals in developing countries carry a political cost far more potent than any legal ramifications. Indictments in a court of law are rare for the reasons listed above. However, sudden drops in popularity and voter apathy are far more common. This is a recurrent feature in much of Latin American and South Asian history. Rajiv Gandhi lost an election in November 1989 in the backdrop of the Bofors kickback scandal at a time when inflation was low and the economy was growing reasonably well. Manmohan Singh’s UPA-II government was similarly thwacked at the polls on account of several scandals, even though it had presided over a period of rapid and reasonably inclusive development.

Pakistan’s own history carries its own examples, especially in the province of Punjab. Whether Surrey mansion was acquired through misappropriated public funds or not never really mattered in a legal sense. What mattered most was that voters in Punjab thought it was. Similarly, despite the absence of sentencing in any number of scandals that surfaced between 2008 and 2013, the PPP was sent packing in Punjab, in part due to voter perception of corruption and governance failures.

The London flats offer the potential to be PML-N’s Surrey mansion. For the better part of three decades, the party’s ruling family has exercised a comparative advantage in the political field on account of being born wealthy and not having an easily identifiable corruption scandal pinned to its flag. This is not to say there haven’t been any dubious practices. The modus operandi of every PML-N government has been to centralise authority, provide selective disbursement of patronage, and expedite development processes by cutting corners.

All of these, however, are harder to turn into easily digestible slogans and messages. Most voters will be uninterested in hearing about how a power plant or a highway was built by flouting PPRA regulations and the principles of competitive bidding. All they will see is a functioning power plant or a highway.

On paper, at least, the revelation of offshore companies and foreign assets reduces this comparative advantage of perceptions maintained by the PML-N’s leadership. Its actual political impact will be contingent on how opposition parties use the scandal with the voters, the kind of messaging it develops, and the steps it takes to keep it in the news till the next general election.

In scenario A, the scandal sticks like the Surrey mansion, and the PML-N’s electoral lead in its home province is cut down to a plurality or, at its extreme, overturned.

In scenario B, however, the mass-market recognition of offshore companies and foreign assets may amount to nothing with Punjab’s voters. People could very well shrug it off and continue to vote for the PML-N due to their familiarity with the party and their perception of its record of delivering in office. If this does happen, it leaves the PTI — the party doing politics solely on an anti-corruption agenda — with a deeper and far more existential question to solve.

The writer is a freelance columnist.

umairjaved@lumsalumni.pk

Twitter: @umairjav

Published in Dawn, December 19th, 2016

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