Accountability, like any other term associated with modern good governance, is a grossly abused word in Pakistan. Just as the victors of a war determine what the terms of the peace are, the people running the government determine what sort of accountability, and whom to target with it, the country requires. It all boils down to the simple fact that those who are in the government will malign, torment and persecute those who have been thrown out of it. With twists and turns of political fortunes, accountability has never known to have achieved anything worthy for all the money spent on it.
It is, therefore, not surprising that Gen Musharraf has not even made a pretense to do justice to his "fair, impartial, across-the-board" claim. So it was all hunky-dory with him as he spared the religious leaders in the Opposition, Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) in order to set up what came to be known as the secret Military-Mullah Alliance. For all the NAB's evangelical zeal to recover the "billions" embezzled from the state treasury, this secret arrangement explains why it was so bullish on, for instance, Asif Ali Zardari and not at all so on the religio-political leaders. This in spite of the evidence that some of the religious leaders were involved in funnelling money for the Al-Qaeda terror network. What it underlined was not only the patent double standards and prejudice informing the whole accountability process, but also the ugly skeletons in the cupboard the state wanted to hide from public view.
Not very long ago, Zardari was the last politician the NAB was expected to hold its fire on. But then, just like what happened in the Holmes mystery, the NAB failed to bark when he was released from eight years of prison on court orders.
Not once, but twice, on November 22 last and then a month later. Zardari was arrested on November 5, 1996 under the Maintenance of Public Order Ordinance, a black law of the first order that allowed the government to take into custody anyone for 90 days without formally charging the person. The arrest came immediately after the sacking of the second Benazir Bhutto government. Later 21 cases were levelled against him one after the other of which 13 came up before the court while in the rest he was exonerated during inquiry or acquitted by the court. The time-honoured tradition has been that each time he was bailed out or acquitted, a fresh charge was slapped on his face. This precluded his release, even though in eight years the state failed to produce a shred of conclusive evidence to prove him guilty. So why the NAB did not slam Zardari with a new charge when he was bailed out twice? That is the curious incident.
The NAB's strange behaviour coincided with the official talk of political reconciliation the government wanted to bring about in the country. The idea of improving political atmospherics, meaning thereby attempts to build bridges to the moderate forces, did not occur to Gen Musharraf not a day before the Military-Mullah bonhomie started soaring by the middle of 2004. By the time Zardari was released, the MMA had been dead against Gen Musharraf remaining as army chief beyond December. Yet, his rearrest on December 21 and release the next day, both by court orders, were the powerful signals the establishment has sent that it will all too readily deploy the accountability blackmail if Zardari poses a serious threat to Gen Musharraf's political allies. In other words, expediency is the rule and accountability, the exception.
For Zardari, he has seen it all before. In August 1990, President Ghulam Ishaq Khan dismissed the first Benazir government for alleged corruption, incompetence and financial mismanagement. Zardari, who by then had done enough to guarantee endurance of "Mr 10 per cent" nickname in popular imagination, was arrested and later imprisoned on corruption charges, with figures again running into "billions". Enter a sudden, unexpected list in the political preferences of the establishment in the summer of 1993, the same tormentor President summoned the slandered Zardari from his purgatory and administered his oath as a cabinet minister, no less, in the newly-inducted Balakh Sher Mazari interim government.
During the second Benazir government, the courts washed away all the sins of corruption of Pakistan's first couple in no time, for the roles of the hounded and the hounder have been changed. The interminable farce of accountability in Pakistan would have been laughable if it were not so ridiculous.
The army-intelligence establishment has been at it since 1958, when the army took over power for the first time in the country. Accountability of corrupt politicians, that is its theme song. In the process, it has made a valiant attempt to diminish politicians, particularly leaders of non-religious parties, tainting them all with the brush of corruption. It is not that politicians are incorruptible, and some of them are indeed monstrously corrupt. But all that is beside the point. Historical convention is that strict accountability of the executive, judiciary and military is the first building block in the creation of a modern civil society. In Pakistan, accountability is perhaps better understood as the army-intelligence establishment's most successful business deal to intervene in politics, cover the tracks of massive corruption in its own ranks and blackmail politicians in order to divide and rule.
* Views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Observer Research Foundation.
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