Who Owns Pakistan - Yimg
Who Owns Pakistan - Yimg
Who Owns Pakistan - Yimg
You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles
YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.
Chapter 5 – Money and Politics<br />
Elected representatives engaged in any private business will be<br />
subjected to specific restrictions that will be brought in through<br />
appropriate " conflict of interest legislation"<br />
<strong>Pakistan</strong> Muslim League, manifesto 1997<br />
In his book about the business communities of India, Dwijendra Tripathi had<br />
noted that the Mughal rulers, " by and large abstained from interfering in the<br />
internal affairs of well-knit business communities, leaving them to manage their<br />
affairs and similarly the merchants big or small tried to stay away from the agents<br />
of the government". He pointed out that if political authorities had to intervene in<br />
disputes of the business communities, they took great pain to appear neutral<br />
when ddjudicating such matters. This fact was illusterated by referring to the<br />
attitude of Mughal monarch AKBAR in the dispute between two claimants of<br />
Bohra community of Gujrat in the 16th century namely, Sheikh Suleman and<br />
Syedna Dawood bin Qutbshah for which intervention of the King was sought who<br />
constituted a high-level tribunal headed by two nominees of the claimants Abdul<br />
Fazal Aziz Koka and Hakim Ali Jilani to adjudicate the case.<br />
Holding each other at arms distance was good for the govt and business who<br />
worked independently in their worlds and complimented each other, Tripathi<br />
concluded. What Mughal rulers were practicing in the 16th century India is a law<br />
today in most of the civilized world, requiring politicians to compartmentalize their<br />
business interests and public life.<br />
Unfortunately this tradition of compartmentalizing administration, business and<br />
politics could not take roots in <strong>Pakistan</strong> where bureaucracy played godfather to<br />
businessmen and politicians from day-one and business and politics became two<br />
faces of the same coin. The allegations that Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif<br />
have traded, spring mainly from the fact that Zardari and Sharif failed to draw a<br />
line between their business interests and the affairs and interests of the state.<br />
General (R) Hamid Gul, former chief of ISI (Inter Services Intelligence), has many<br />
times talked about his meeting in Model Town, Lahore with Nawaz Sharif, on the<br />
eve of his assumption of office of prime minister in 1990, Gul had brought<br />
together the opposition alliance of Islami Jamhoori Ittehad (IJI) that swept the<br />
elections and is a way it was a meeting of the mentor and the protege.<br />
Gul said he advised the incoming prime minister to place his business in a<br />
trust, for the duration of his term of office. While Nawaz Sharif did not<br />
reply, his father , Mian Mohammad Sharif lost temper, saying that all their<br />
127