IT is unfortunate that the term ‘accountability’ in Pakistan has far more implications than its actual definition. Ziaul Haq was the first ruler to have debased the very concept of justice. He postponed an election to seek time in which to destroy the party whose government he had ousted. However, 11 years of ‘accountability’ served him no good, for the PPP returned to power. Regrettably, none of our parties has learnt from this experience. Ghulam Ishaq Khan and the first Sharif government registered cases against PPP leaders and kept them in jail. The PPP returned the compliment when it came to power to continue a perverse tradition in which every government would arrest and drag its predecessors to court on charges considered fraudulent. Pervez Musharraf spawned a judicial process against both PPP and PML-N — and failed in his intentions, because both parties are today ruling Pakistan.

We are constrained to refer to this sordid aspect of our politics because the interior minister of late has been on an anti-Sharif crusade, vowing to take the Sharif brothers to court on a variety of criminal charges. Stigmatised by the Swiss letter affair and Prime Minister Gilani’s conviction, the PPP government has forwarded an alleged $32m money-laundering case against the Sharifs to the National Accountability Bureau, and the Islamabad police have sent a notice to the PML-N leaders in connection with the 1997 raid on the Supreme Court. While there are skeletons in every cupboard, the public knows that the money-laundering case is just one of the thousands of cases which all governments have used as a weapon of political persecution. The absence of such political antics during times of bonhomie between parties — as previously in the case of the PPP and PML-N — and employing them when these parties are at loggerheads back this observation. If history is any indication, this perversion of the concept of answerability has not stopped Pakistan’s political dynasties from continuing to occupy centre-stage. It is time our politicians realised that the only way to defeat rivals is to win votes by performance, not through witch-hunts.