Who Owns Pakistan - Yimg

Chapter 5 – Money and Politics
Elected representatives engaged in any private business will be
subjected to specific restrictions that will be brought in through
appropriate " conflict of interest legislation"
Pakistan Muslim League, manifesto 1997
In his book about the business communities of India, Dwijendra Tripathi had
noted that the Mughal rulers, " by and large abstained from interfering in the
internal affairs of well-knit business communities, leaving them to manage their
affairs and similarly the merchants big or small tried to stay away from the agents
of the government". He pointed out that if political authorities had to intervene in
disputes of the business communities, they took great pain to appear neutral
when ddjudicating such matters. This fact was illusterated by referring to the
attitude of Mughal monarch AKBAR in the dispute between two claimants of
Bohra community of Gujrat in the 16th century namely, Sheikh Suleman and
Syedna Dawood bin Qutbshah for which intervention of the King was sought who
constituted a high-level tribunal headed by two nominees of the claimants Abdul
Fazal Aziz Koka and Hakim Ali Jilani to adjudicate the case.
Holding each other at arms distance was good for the govt and business who
worked independently in their worlds and complimented each other, Tripathi
concluded. What Mughal rulers were practicing in the 16th century India is a law
today in most of the civilized world, requiring politicians to compartmentalize their
business interests and public life.
Unfortunately this tradition of compartmentalizing administration, business and
politics could not take roots in Pakistan where bureaucracy played godfather to
businessmen and politicians from day-one and business and politics became two
faces of the same coin. The allegations that Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif
have traded, spring mainly from the fact that Zardari and Sharif failed to draw a
line between their business interests and the affairs and interests of the state.
General (R) Hamid Gul, former chief of ISI (Inter Services Intelligence), has many
times talked about his meeting in Model Town, Lahore with Nawaz Sharif, on the
eve of his assumption of office of prime minister in 1990, Gul had brought
together the opposition alliance of Islami Jamhoori Ittehad (IJI) that swept the
elections and is a way it was a meeting of the mentor and the protege.
Gul said he advised the incoming prime minister to place his business in a
trust, for the duration of his term of office. While Nawaz Sharif did not
reply, his father , Mian Mohammad Sharif lost temper, saying that all their
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