I remember the frenzy with which our Press Hounds fed on the wounds of President Musharraf just a few months back, the harping, the carping, the constant berating. Many ‘journalists’ and hosts showed their ugly sides with bitter recriminations and bilious rumours that they normally substitute for fact. They gave no quarter, then sat back and basked in the glow of success when they had removed a ‘dictator’ from his seat.
Yesterday, we swore a petty thief, a felon, a corrupt man in as Musharraf’s replacement, and I waited expectantly, all day, for the wolves to pounce, for someone to come out and finally denounce Zardari, and do unto to him as they did unto Musharraf. But the silence is deafening. Leading up to the Presidential election, GEO TV was overwhelmed with text messages and emails openly scorning the choice of Zardari as President. In spectacular politician lingo, Sherry Rehman, when faced with public opinion, said the public was not informed enough to understand this decision (whereas this same public ranting against Musharraf was obviously more than informed enough to do so at the time).
Well, Ms. Rehman, here’s how ‘ill-informed’ this public is; certainly far less than our Media, who keep insisting that Zardari has never been convicted of any corruption charges:
- August 6, 2003: A Swiss court found Bhutto and Zardari guilty of money laundering and sentenced them to 6-month jail terms, fines and monetary restitution to the Pakistani government. The case went to the Appellate courts, but the conviction, is nevertheless a conviction. It means they were both found guilty.
- April 16, 1999: A Pakistani Court found both Benazir Bhutto and Asif Zardari to be guilty of accepting kickbacks from a Swiss goods inspection company, sentencing the couple to five years in prison (which Benazir, in exile, never carried out), fining them $8.6 million, and barring them from public office. Again, the court found them guilty of corruption. Whether the case is in appeal, or as BB was fond of claiming, trumped up on Nawaz Sharif’s authority, a second guilty verdict can be added to the list of charges for which, supposedly, Zardari and Benazir have ‘never been convicted”.
- 1998: Nawaz Sharif’s Accountability Bureau, and Citibank determined that unlawful wealth had been laundered through Citibank to over 7 different Swiss Accounts, all credited to Asif Ali Zardari and Benazir Bhutto. in 1999, a US Congress investigation into Citibank released a Case History of the passage of ill-gotten monies out of Pakistan on behalf of Asif Ali Zardari. While the Case History focused on the lack of due-diligence on behalf of Citibank employees, their guilt naturally implicates and vilifies Zardari, in that his monies had to be laundered.
The Pakistani blogosphere has far more articles along the same lines, offering proofs of guilt, far more concrete than allegations against Musharraf. Yet this is the ‘Democracy’ for which the West bows to us, the lawyers revel in the streets and media pats themselves on their backs. Because, we finally have a leader who comes from among us, and believes what we believe, and values what we value: money and self.
The question now is, is he the best of us, that he should lead us, and if he is, does that mean the least, or the most corrupt among us? I guess that depends on what we consider the greater virtue.