For the establishment, Bureaucracy and the Army or the NRP or may be for the 1% of Pakistanis this might not even be an issue, but for ordinary Pakistani awam the last few months have been tough. Not politically, or religiously but tough to survive in the era when Pakistan’s economy is breaking records. On top of that, being let down by the one who claimed to hold justice and accountability as the prime reason to being in the government.
As the sugar crisis still looming for the ordinary Pakistanis, the price of sugar which went from 26 rupees per kilo to almost 60 rupees per kilo all over the country didn’t come down with all the government intervention. This is just the second time in the history of Pakistan. The price this week was still around 48 rupees per kilo in major urban areas and even higher in the small cities and towns. Buts that’s not the issue, on March 1st the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) announced that it would investigate the reasons behind the price hike and would prosecute the people who are behind this crisis. That statement on the 1st of March was a glimmer of hope in a society which has been deprived of justice for the last six decades. The newspapers were filled with praises for NAB for the next week. This kind of step has never been taken on such a level before; ordinary people on the streets were saying that it would be an opportunity to set the record straight.
But the glimmer of hope didn’t even last two weeks, justice is not a virtue on which Pakistani establishment is standing on. The establishment would never let it self to be judged, they are above the law, rather they are the law. Just today NAB announced that, its abandoning its inquiry saying that….
Once again for the sake of “wider good” justice has been let down, it’s not the first time we have done that. We did that in 1971 when we thought that the morale of 300,000 or so army men was more important than the morale of the nation. Now again the “accountability” bureau is asserting it self on the nation and saying that controlling the price is more important than serving justice. Or in other word bring the members of the establishment to justice. My question is, is it not in the wider good of the nation to hold people accountable?
Or as they say in Pakistan, Judiciary is a farce in Pakistan and this act by NAB is just another act perpetrated by the establishment against the people of Pakistan.