ISLAMABAD – Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Chairman Imran Khan’s
Sunday rally was also a setup to take action against Prime Minister Nawaz
Sharif, grabbing on the Panama Papers leak linking Sharif’s family with
offshore wealth. Imran considered it a second chance to throw out Nawaz Sharif.
Imran Khan who protested in Islamabad for couple of months in 2014 over suspected electoral scam, has threatened to call new protests for Sharif’s resignation, saying this month the prime minister has lost the “moral authority to rule”.
Khan assistants insist the government is trembling and it is time to attack. “We demand the resignation of the prime minister on moral grounds,” said Shafqat Mahmood, a senior leader of PTI.
This month, leaked documents from the Mossack Fonseca law firm in Panama disclosed Sharif’s sons Hassan and Hussain, and daughter Maryam, possessed at least three offshore holding companies registered in the British Virgin Islands.
Sharif said his children have done nothing wrong - he gave in to opposition demands for a Supreme Court selected inquiry commission on Friday and said he would resign if it found wrongdoing - but rivals blame the family of using the tax harbor to launder stolen money and dodge taxes.
The government has discharged Khan’s warning of protests and says the 2014 sit-ins against electoral rigging had also damaged Khan’s trustworthiness after election tribunals administrated that the 2013 poll was largely free and fair.
“Imran is just really anxious for any kind of shortcut to become prime minister and with these Panama leaks he thinks he has hit the winnings,” Muhammad Zubair, minister for privatization and a member of the prime minister’s media team, told Reuters.
“But it would be a big mistake to launch any movement right now, the public is just exhausted of his immature politics.”
“To have any genuine chance of dislodging Sharif, he will have the support of the powerful military”.
The army has not remarked publicly on Khan’s new threat of protests, but on Tuesday, the army chief, indeed the country’s most powerful man, voiced against corruption in general.
“Across the board accountability is necessary for the unity, honesty and prosperity of Pakistan,” General Raheel Sharif said while lecturing a military seminar.
But while the military may have seen Khan as beneficial in the previous protests, by putting pressure on the civilian government and enabling the army to convince it to fall into line with its wishes, the generals also see him as an irritation for seeking to end the fight against the Pakistani Taliban and negotiate peace.
Few believe that Khan has won over the generals, and without the military’s backing there is little chance Khan will succeed in dethroning Nawaz Sharif.
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