Prime Minister Imran Khan’s close aide and special assistant on overseas Pakistanis Zulfiqar Bukhari has resigned after being named in the Rawalpindi Ring Road (RRR) scandal where an unignorable amount of corruption was unearthed. There are allegations that alterations in the routes were made so that certain real estate projects would benefit heavily and these have been linked with Mr Bukhari, Federal Minister for Aviation Ghulam Sarwar Khan and several bureaucrats. Reportedly, all necessary principal approvals for the realignments in the project and release of funds had been given by PM Imran Khan and Punjab Chief Minister Usman Buzdar. Going by the standard expected of PTI politicians, as defined by Mr Bukhari in his ‘resignation tweet’ whereby any government official accused of corruption must step down, clear his name and only then get his post back, both PM Khan, CM Buzdar and all those being named in this scandal should resign as well. Such hollow displays of taking the moral high ground are reserved only for unelected members of government because when it comes to the numbers game, PM Khan ill affords disrupting his carefully calibrated, fragile and thin majority in Parliament.
It will be interesting to see whether or not the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) approaches this case with the same level of ferocity and ‘concern for public money’ as it does when the opposition is involved. When it comes to them, the rule is simple: arrest first, ask questions later. The rationale for this practice, deemed by the Supreme Court of Pakistan a violation of basic human rights by unnecessarily restricting one’s freedom of movement, is to keep the suspect in the country, close to NAB so that the inquiry can progress uninterrupted. By this standard, Mr Bukhari should be picked up soon, considering he is a UK citizen and therefore a major flight risk. Going by the events of the past two and a half years, it seems more likely that even this latest corruption scandal that exclusively names members of the PTI government will slowly and steadily shift from the headlines and ‘cabinet meeting discussions’ to cold storage while the NAB will keep its foot off the pedal.
