IT was the most open of secrets imaginable until this week and yet, the extraordinary specificity with which Younus Habib, the disgraced chief of a defunct bank, dredged up the history of the security establishment’s gross interference in the political process made for an extraordinary and unprecedented spectacle. The very apex of the army leadership and its premier intelligence agency, the ISI, stands accused of perhaps the greatest transgression imaginable in a constitutional democratic order: using vast sums of money to systematically manipulate the electoral process to usher in favourites and keep out perceived threats. It is not just Mr Habib’s word against others: the Supreme Court is now in possession of corroborating claims by Gen (retd) Asad Durrani and Naseerullah Babar. And yet, a focus on the past alone would be an injustice.

The issue at stake is much bigger than who took what sum of money 20-odd years ago and which generals, and their non-uniformed counterparts, engineered a particular political dispensation. So while lawful punishment for the individuals involved in ‘Mehrangate’ should be pursued vigorously, the SC should also focus on what measures can help strengthen the present and the future of democracy in Pakistan. For who can say with any degree of certainty that manipulation of the democratic and electoral process is not being attempted even today? While nothing other than circumstantial proof has been proffered so far, the political landscape is rife with speculation about establishment support for Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf and the right-wing conglomeration that is the Difa-i-Pakistan Council. Meanwhile, the primary beneficiary of the ISI-sponsored Islami Jamhoori Ittehad in 1990, Nawaz Sharif, has become perhaps the staunchest critic of establishment interference in politics and has, barring an unwise foray into the Mansoor Ijaz memo affair, been consistently practising and preaching a politics that is insulated from army and ISI interference. So perhaps the greatest benefit that the SC hearings on the Asghar Khan petition could yield would be if the spotlight on the past were used to help clean up the present.

Two matters in particular need attention. One, the role of money in politics. Outrageous as the sums spent by the ISI to manipulate an election were, the fact of the matter is that money plays a big part in any electoral victory, even the more ‘democratic’ ones. Tighten spending and disclosure rules and the system would get a genuine democratic boost. Two, the spectre of ‘national interest’. That most malleable of terms used as a cudgel with which to beat opponents whenever convenient could do with being banished from the realms of politics and security altogether.