THE observation made by the Supreme Court is manifestly true. Accountability of high officials has broken down because the institutional system of checks and balances is not functioning. Good sense and propriety may have stopped the court from going further in its observations, but the facts speak for themselves: by design or through neglect, the political leadership of the country has allowed oversight and investigatory watchdogs to be rendered toothless. The Supreme Court named three institutions, NAB, the FIA and the FBR, though the scope of the institutional breakdown is much wider and encompasses everything from regulatory bodies to criminal investigation authorities. Nothing works as it should and when green shoots do appear, when there is a nascent flowering of individual initiative and daring, the potential threat to the powers-that-be is quickly smothered. As the exasperated court noted, supposedly independent watchdogs and investigatory bodies not only do nothing, but are often proud of and defiant about their dismal record. The sclerotic accountability system, if not retooled and re-energised, could become a threat to the democratic order itself. Time and again, threats to the democratic order, from within the system and by anti-democrats, have tapped into public disenchantment and been built on the refusal of the political class to submit to the rule of law, transparency and accountability.

What can be done? The political protagonists from the 1990s appear to have learned at least one lesson: accountability should not be used as a political tool against their opponents. But the PPP and PML-N have gone from one extreme to another — from accountability as vendetta to accountability as nonexistent, even when it is desperately needed. More than eight years of democratic transition has produced not one suggestion of note by either the previous government or the present one that could further the cause of public accountability. True, the PTI has made anti-corruption the cornerstone of its politics, but too many compromises inside the party and too few legislative or institution-strengthening ideas in the assemblies have left it with little achieved on its signature policy issue. Meanwhile, a judicial system based on adversarial, common law canons does not create the space for energetic intervention by the courts. As evidenced by the Panama Papers hearings, the courts have few options when other institutions choose to stall. Perhaps a stinging, well-argued judgement will help break the impasse.

Published in Dawn, February 24th, 2017