Pakistan’s Supreme Court ordered the disqualification of Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif after a corruption investigation into his family’s finances, plunging the South Asian nation into political turmoil ahead of a national election next year.
The five-member bench of the Supreme Court yesterday gave its unanimous verdict after a graft probe that found disparity between his family’s wealth and his known sources of income.
Two justices had earlier in April voted to disqualify him, while the other three mandated a further investigation.
Photo: EPA
The court also disqualified Pakistani Minister of Finance Ishaq Dar.
“Having furnished a false declaration under solvent information, Mian Nawaz Sharif is not honest,” Justice Ejaz Afzal Khan said, reading the verdict in court. “Therefore, we disqualify him to be a member of the national assembly,” and “with immediate effect thereof cease to be prime minister of Pakistan.”
Sharif is the second world leader to be felled by the Panama Papers leak, following the resignation of Iceland’s prime minister last year.
The leaks also led to the exit of Spain’s industry minister, two pension fund chief executives in Iceland and senior European bankers. It also prompted increased regulatory scrutiny of offshore accounts around the world.
While the findings against Sharif are a blow for the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, they are unlikely to lead to its collapse.
The ruling party has the majority in the National Assembly, parliament’s lower house, which elects the premier.
A loyal lawmaker, such as Sharif’s nephew Hamza or Pakistani Minister of Planning and Development Ahsan Iqbal, are seen as potential candidates who could immediately take up his position and allow the government to complete its five-year term until next year’s election.
Shehbaz Sharif, the prime minister’s younger brother and chief minister of Punjab, is also seen as succession candidate, although the party would have to call elections to get him into office as he is not a lawmaker in the National Assembly.
Nevertheless, the verdict and ensuing political chaos might set back the party’s attempts to revive the economy after it staved off a balance-of-payments crisis in 2013 by turning to a US$6.6 billion IMF loan program.
The economy grew at a rate just above 5 percent in the last fiscal year, according to government estimates, and China is financing more than US$50 billion in badly needed infrastructure projects across the nation as part of its “One Belt, One Road” trade route plan.
The disqualification is to cause “political instability and we have already seen a trailer of its impact on the stock market,” Peshawar University Department of Political Science chairman AZ Hilali said. “Impatience, intolerance and unacceptability is back in politics and that may affect the next election’s polling pattern and outcome.”
The Supreme Court in November last year started looking into the corruption allegations against the Sharifs after a report from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists showed Nawaz Sharif’s children either owned or have signing rights to authorize transactions of four offshore companies in the British Virgin Islands.
Those holdings were alleged to have been used to make property purchases in London.
Sharif’s political rivals doubted the premier’s family obtained those assets legally.
The head of the second-largest opposition party and former cricket star Imran Khan has driven a passionate campaign seeking the premier’s resignation.
Politicians in the coup-prone nation have long been accused of corruption and have often been thrown out of power. No prime minister has completed a five-year term since parliamentary democracy was introduced in 1971 under the constitution.
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