It is almost as if he has disappeared from the face of the earth. For many in Pakistan, the unbearably long and torturous tenure of Nawaz Sharif now appears to be something of the past. No longer does the Pakistan Television devote the entire 'Khabarnama' to his antics. Many had called it 'Nawaz Nama'.
Today Sharif, his brother Shahbaz, Accountability Bureau commissioner Saif-ur-Rehman and former information minister Mushaid Hussain remain under heavy guard as their misdeeds unfold.
For Nawaz Sharif, at least, the future remains bleak. Even the place he is being held in is a mystery. Nobody, not even his family members, are allowed to meet him.
But this state of affairs cannot last long in a country where the courts are functioning. The coup makers have to hurry up and try Sharif in court. Whether this would be in ordinary courts or in a military one depends on the charges. One thing is, however, very clear. There has to be transparency in all the military does. As time moves on, sympathy, the type that the military enjoys today, will start receding and Sharif will start looking like the underdog. Already, Amnesty Interna-tional, in an open letter to Gen Musharraf, says that the regime should move quickly to either charge the ousted officials or release them.
That there was gross mishandling of state funds is no secret nor the fact that the high-ups in the Sharif government were loan defaulters. However, if the cases are going to stick then these will be the ones which include reports of the Sharif brothers and Hussain leaking national defence secrets. The recent warming up of the Sharif brothers to Washington where they tried to undermine their armed forces is something that Musharraf will not forgive.
However, one case which the whole nation was witness to was Sharif's attempts to put the life of the chief of Pakistan's armed forces, his wife and hundreds of other passengers, including schoolchildren, at stake. Knowing fully well that the aircraft coming in from Sri Lanka had only seven minutes of fuel left, the Sharifs were hellbent on refusing it landing rights in Karachi. Together with this the other serious charge likely to be framed is Sharif's attempts to divide the army. For Sharif this is going to be an entirely new exercise, when the stark reality hits home that this one time he cannot 'buy' his way through.
