Year: 2017

“The real conversation in the drawing rooms these days is whether it is just Mr. Sharif who will be disqualified or whether it would extend to his entire family — two sons and a daughter who are the ones actually named in the Panama leaks. With his eyes already on the 2018 elections, Mr. Sharif would hope that his daughter and political heir, Maryam Nawaz, survives this crisis. If the entire family is disqualified, it will certainly send a signal that things are up for grabs”, says the author.

The office of Pakistan’s Prime Minister is subject to pulls and pressures far in excess of those in other democracies. But even by these standards, Nawaz Sharif is under inordinate stress. He is facing a court case and a scathing media trial.

A three-member Bench of the Supreme Court is yet to give a final verdict regarding his disqualification. The decision will be based on the report by a Joint Investigation Team (JIT) established by the orders of the court to investigate Mr. Sharif and his family’s assets after the leak of the Panama Papers related to holdings in offshore companies.

The question now is whether the Chief Justice will give a verdict based on the decision of the three judges or call for a larger Bench. The judiciary might like to get the decision popularly accepted by calling for a larger Bench. It is not as if all onlookers are convinced about the judges or the JIT being bipartisan.

Odds stacked against PM

It is a fact that corruption investigations are not easy, especially when the country’s main anti-corruption institutions, the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) and the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), lack forensic investigation expertise. Even in the case of some of the Sharifs’ assets, the JIT hired the services of a foreign company. Notwithstanding such lacunae, the highest court was willing to open up a Pandora’s box of investigating “a constant murmur nationally as well internationally about respondent No. 1 (Nawaz Sharif) indulging in corruption, corrupt practices and money laundering”. If proven guilty, Mr. Sharif cannot hold office as per Article 62 (1) (f) of the 1973 Constitution as he would be declared as not being sadiq (truthful) and ameen (honest). Even if the judges feel uncomfortable using the JIT report as the basis of their decision, the axe could still fall on Mr. Sharif on the basis of him officiating as a director in a company registered in the UAE while he was heading the government.

There are today very few people betting on Mr. Sharif completing his term, which if he does, he’d be the first Prime Minister to do. But as far as the popular narrative in the country goes, Mr. Sharif is already gone. The working of the state bureaucracy has already slowed down in anticipation of some transition.

There are even rumors of Mr. Sharif’s current Interior Minister, Chaudhry Nisar, being favored by both the Establishment and the rival Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party as one of the candidates to replace him while the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) government is allowed to complete the term.

In any case, there will be no hurry to hold the next elections due to the need for a new delimitation of constituencies based on the recently held census — senior judges believe the delimitation should take place. Meanwhile, Mr. Sharif’s future role in politics will be determined by how far the court proceedings drag and how it turns out personally and politically for him in the months and years to come. What is certain is that Mr. Sharif is not inclined to resign, as was expected of him, but, if it comes to that, to go down as a political martyr — a man politically victimized by non-parliamentary institutions of the country.

The media campaign aims to make him bleed politically and increase his losses the longer he stays. Interestingly, there are serving state officials in numerous WhatsApp groups who are gently directing conversations in a certain direction, or watching while their partners do the same. It is not that lack of accountability is not a huge problem in Pakistan but that accountability has always been used as a political tool to punish rivals. Hence, ordinary people forgave Dr. A.Q. Khan, the architect of Pakistan’s nuclear program, and accept him as a hero despite his confession on television regarding illegal sale of nuclear technology because in their eyes he did return something for all he took. Also, in the absence of the enactment of a strong law or principle of the rule of law, even courts are perceived by the man on the street as either corrupt or highly political. Moreover, when the law is meant to selectively conduct accountability (excluding the military and the judiciary), many raised eyebrows at an earlier judgment in the Panama Papers case that quoted Mario Puzo’s The Godfather but no law.

Post-verdict scenarios

Since the power rests with the judges, their verdict will influence the short- or longer-term future of the Sharif family. The real conversation in the drawing rooms these days is whether it is just Mr. Sharif who will be disqualified or whether it would extend to his entire family — two sons and a daughter who are the ones actually named in the Panama leaks. With his eyes already on the 2018 elections, Mr. Sharif would hope that his daughter and political heir, Maryam Nawaz, survives this crisis. If the entire family is disqualified, it will certainly send a signal that things are up for grabs.

This means that even if the PML(N) remains, it would be mired in infighting and could be as easily manipulated as the Pakistan Muslim League (Quaid-e-Azam) was. While parts of central and north Punjab will remain aligned with Mr. Sharif, there will much greater activity in south and south-west Punjab where people will be influenced by, as per local political lingo, ‘whichever way the strong wind blows’. This is translated as a clear indication that the Establishment is not in a party’s favor.

But the process of shifting gears will essentially start with electable candidates moving to another party or contesting elections as independent candidates. In urban centers, the anti-corruption slogan, compounded with the anti-incumbency factor, will play a role.

The case against Mr. Sharif is indeed critical as the manner in which the court proceeds will determine not only his short- to medium-term political moves but also his long- to longer-term future. If the judges do not appear bipartisan and use the principle of law rather than their opinion — a fashion that dates back to Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry’s days — Mr. Sharif will be perceived as a victim rather than a culprit.

Even his disqualification will then generate the myth that he was punished for something else rather than what the court and the JIT tried him for. This may not save Mr. Sharif now but will haunt the Establishment in a few years.

 (The author is a Pakistani military scientist, political commentator and an author who serves as a research associate at the SOAS South Asia Institute. She is the author of ‘Military Inc. — Inside Pakistan’s Military Economy’.)

BR Ambedkar was an original economic thinker who believed in advancing the interests of the Dalits by focusing on the economy. According to him, the economic conditions that affected the Dalits were – monetary circulation in the economy, size of land holdings and the pattern of public finance.

“In his writings on money, he directly challenged the dominant Keynesian view in the 1930s regarding the delinking of supply of money from gold reserves.  Keynes had argued that due to the development of the monetary- exchange mechanism in advanced capitalist economies such as the UK, there was no need to limit the supply of money by linking it with the gold reserves.  Ambedkar opposed this view not because he had any special fascination with gold but because he considered that delinking of money supply from gold reserves would open the possibilities of excessive supply of money. This, in turn, could lead to financial instability and inflation”, says the author.

Bhim Rao Ambedkar, the chief framer of the Indian Constitution, was also an original economic thinker. The originality of his economic thinking can be interpreted as eclecticism due to his non-adherence to any one particular economic ideology — Marxism, neo-classical economic thought, support for market economy or state regulation. However, behind his eclecticism lies a common running thread in his ideas on different economic issues. That unity was provided by his concern for the Dalit sections of Indian society.

In adopting this approach, he can be compared with Karl Marx who was ruthless in his rigorous analysis of capitalism. That rigor was not merely an academic enterprise but closely linked with defending the interests of the working class. In both cases —Marx for the working class and Ambedkar for the Dalits — there was no compromise in the objective analysis of the economic conditions to suit any partisan considerations.

On the contrary, both viewed a scientific examination of the economic conditions as a necessary condition for advancing the interests of the working class and the Dalits (for Ambedkar). In the Indian context, in particular,  and  South-Asian context in general, the social categories of class and caste overlap and interpenetrate each other despite the autonomous status. Three main issues on which Ambedkar focused his intellectual energies were: monetary circulation in the economy, size of land holdings as a part of the broader agriculture strategy and public finance especially the pattern of federal finance.

In his writings on money, he directly challenged the dominant Keynesian view in the 1930s regarding the delinking of supply of money from gold reserves.  Keynes had argued that due to the development of the monetary- exchange mechanism in advanced capitalist economies such as the UK, there was no need to limit the supply of money by linking it with the gold reserves.  Ambedkar opposed this view not because he had any special fascination with gold but because he considered that delinking of money supply from gold reserves would open the possibilities of excessive supply of money. This, in turn, could lead to financial instability and inflation. From the viewpoint of the poor sections of society, Ambedkar thought that both inflation and financial instability would hit them adversely. The rich might benefit from financial instability by using a range of alternative investment options. The 2007-8 financial crisis of the global capitalist economy, triggered by unregulated financial markets and resulting in huge income and wealth inequalities, is a testimony to Ambedkar’s prophetic insights. For him, the seemingly technical question of money supply and gold reserves needed to be assessed for how these impacted the welfare of Dalits who constituted the bulk of the poorer segment.

Ambedkar adopted the same method to assess the conditions in India’s rural economy. He argued that fragmentation of land holdings in India was leading to decreasing the average size of land holdings to an economically inefficient level. He advocated consolidation of landholdings in order to increase the average size of a farming unit. On the face of it, this may seem against the interests of small landholders.  However, from the viewpoint of economic efficiency, he did not consider the defense of uneconomic landholding size was in the interests of poor peasantry or landless workers. He, therefore, proposed cooperative agriculture which ensured pooling of smaller units into a bigger unit to avail of the economies of scale.  In his view, cooperative farming was desirable for small landholders and landless workers who were mostly Dalits. In looking at alternative modes of farming and suggesting cooperative farming as the most-desirable system, Ambedkar’s goal was the defense of the economic interest of the Dalits.

The third major issue Ambedkar examined was the question of public finance, dealing with revenue and expenditure of different layers of governance. His basic premise was that each level of government needed to have appropriate sources of revenue to meet its expenditure obligations. He further argued that along with the quantitative dimensions of revenue and expenditure, it was necessary to examine the qualitative dimensions of the revenue-expenditure pattern. A government may be able to generate generous revenue but it might fritter away that revenue through unproductive expenditure such as luxury spending by ministers and government officials. In contrast, even a modest increase in revenue if spent on public goods such as health and education can have a multiplier effect on improving the quality of life. The provision of such public goods is especially important for the Dalits and other pooper sections of society.

Ambedkar also examined the impact of centralization versus decentralization on the life conditions of Dalits. From one angle, he seemed to be supportive of centralization but he also considered excessive centralization as a threat. In arguments in support of centralization, he viewed that decentralization could empower the local upper-caste elites more against the Dalits. He viewed centralization as creating conditions for authoritarianism that can weaken democracy.

In Ambedkar’s view, the weakening of democracy was not in the interests of the Dalits. Precisely for this reason, Ambedkar opposed and defeated a proposal from Jawaharlal Nehru that India’s Constitution could be amended by a simple majority in the Parliament. He viewed Nehru’s proposal as paving the way for increased centralization and succeeded in inserting that a government needed to have at least a two-third majority in the Parliament to make a constitutional amendment. In supporting or opposing centralization, his key concern was the defense of Dalits’ political and economic interests.

All those who oppose caste and other forms of discrimination need to learn this Ambedkarite method of keeping the concerns of Dalits as the central determining criterion in assessing different policy options.  In the era of global climate change, a creative development of Ambedkar’s ideas is necessary to suggest sustainable and egalitarian modes of economic activities.

(The author is a Professor of Accounting, Finance and Economics at the Oxford Brookes University, the UK)