by Mian Hameed 8 December 2020
The fallen colonial vestiges were expeditiously resurrected; comes to the rescue the new order—the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB). These organizations are means to punishment from God upon the inhabitants of the earth. The 150,000 people of the Awash River Valley would believe so. In the 1960s, the WB and IMF supported a large agriculture organization by funding a series of dams along central Ethiopia’s Awash River Valley, it brought upon the people severe misery (arid lands, irrigation decreased, land nurturing from flooding stopped, normal migration routes blocked and warfighting among the tribes began from spilling over into the neighboring lands.) “It was explained as a punishment from God.” –Scholarships of Patricia Adams and Peter Koehn.
“Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” The Lord has his punishing ways to cause their doom. “If the people become corrupt, the worst among them will be appointed rulers over them.” And what will they do to you? – “They take and consume your wealth and they beat your back.” –Christianity & Islam.
Religions are very clear in how swiftly it may punish and warns what dishonest rulers will bring upon those he rules—tyranny from odious regimes. Though among the world institutions, there is intellectual silence and moral calm. They have shown to run their senses blind and fund, and fund, and fund the odious regimes, is “harmful to the target country’s population” in the long run. The debt keeps on piling without the consent of the people.
But without a doubt, Musharraf, Zardari, and Nawaz Sharif were odious regimes. Musharraf was odious because he was a dictator. Asif Zardari was dubbed as Mr. Ten-percent, consumed bribes to pay the costs for keeping the lights on, would up the ante to Mr. forty-percent to play in the league of the ill, and was found a beneficiary to illegitimate wealth, confirmed in an unprecedented 2016 Panama Papers leak.
As for Sharif, a convicted criminal, his rogue offshore finances also surfaced in Panama Papers. Sharif, has acquired support of governments with decaying scruples to help him keep his freedom and his illegitimate wealth, is living fatter than before in the U.K. Sharif’s fait accompli will live through Altaf Hussian, a saboteur is a fugitive, once PM Khan reminded to the U.K. government for harboring Hussain, a terrorist.
Pakistan is left with an arduous challenge and seemingly insurmountable pressures, leaving the Pakistani State yet to convict Zardari, who is per the people’s mandate ‘guilty till proven innocent.’ As for Sharif, a man that is likely to benefit from “exceptional circumstances” of the British law, outmaneuvered the establishment (judiciary and the military), both allowed a convict to escape the wrath of Pakistanis and PM Khan, on grounds of manufactured health crises while in prison.
Pakistan has shown lethargy in extracting stolen money from Zardari and has let go of Sharif, to exit the country, along with his loot. These developments must have placed a few beneficiary countries and the international financial institutions in an orgy of joy that for a while have been seen in Pakistan nurturing these vessels.
In the context of Pakistan collecting on odious debt from the odiousness of global financial institutions, leads us to the prevailing reality that these entities, the WB and the IMF, were made from a selfish and a cruel human flaw, has given us its critics.
Dr. Eric Toussaint, President of CADTM International, and sits on the Scientific Council of ATTAC France tells us, the WB is the funding body of large projects and IMF is the policy arm are involved in a never-ending coup d’état – These institutions are unfair colonial funding bodies – They influence policies in the geopolitical context that run counter to the world’s population – The WB and the IFM loan criteria “avoid shoring up self-reliant models” by funding certain ‘color of money’ to “entrap world in general.”
Dr. Jason Hinkle an ‘academic at the University of London and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts’ has pitched power imbalance as the root of the problem of the calamity café (financial institutions.) Dr. Hinkle in his article, “Apartheid in the World Bank and the IMF,” argues, “They [the WB and the IFM] remain largely colonial in character to this day” and their apartheid policies since 1960 have quadrupled the size of the per capita income gap between the North [the United States, Canada, Japan, Western Europe, and Australia] and the South; “what can only be described as a striking pattern of divergence.”
Hinkle suggests the said disparity is because these are “key institutions that govern global economic policy” in their interest from a problem that trickles from the world financial institution’s leaders at the top from an unspoken agreement where the WB’s president is “nominated always from the U.S. and the president of IMF has always been a European.” From the per capita voting ratio among the global North and global South, and South Asia, the system is undemocratic to its core—minority governing majority. –Dr. Hinkle.
Another critic, Yauch, sees the tyranny of Banks and IMF clearly. Brady Yauch quoting Lord Aikins Adusie for Probe International, writes, “’ Could it be,’ he says, ‘that the Bank and IMF give the loans to corrupt regimes that then deposit the money in their private banks in Europe and then ask the poor people who never benefited from the loans to use the little resources they have to service the odious debts?’” Pakistan precisely fits the scenario.
Pakistan’s current regime has given some thought to furnish Pakistanis justice from odious debt recovery efforts inspired after Ecuador’s Debt Audit Committee, and to exhibit Rafael Correa’s pride. Correa said, “Those callous, dishonest bureaucrats have to respect our country,” and asked the IMF delegation to leave the country and deported the WB’s delegate. Dr. Eric Toussaint was asked by the former President of Ecuador Correa, for assistance.
In support of this new quest, I am making some assumptions for Pakistan to recover the plunder. Therefore, the Security Council incorporates the following assumptions as a rule of law for all bodies to adhere to:
That there is consensus on the odious debt doctrine: (a) Debt without the consent of people, and (b) debt that did not benefit the people in full awareness of the creditor is no longer a sovereign debt.
That the aforesaid precedence has assumed the evidence in the scholarships of Patricia Adams (1991), and Joseph Hanlon (2002) as bonafide, which claims much of the Developing-Country’s debt is illegitimate, and Pakistan is named as one.
That it is further assumed, the Security Council rule of law allows any person (Plaintiff) from the virtues human dignities, to bring a lawsuit in the International Court of Justice by submitting a Complaint using an ‘EZ Form.’ “EZ” as in ease of submitting pro se Complaint, which will guard against a fumble, which can make a Complaint non-compliant against the legal technicalities of the process and become grounds for denying one access to justice. The basis of the lawsuit is a two-part relief; there is a crime (theft) committed on top of violating the odious debt doctrine.
With these assumptions in place, the financial institutions will comply with the rule of law per the court’s decision. For the second relief, the prima facie evidence is the Plaintiff’s question before a judge, which the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) in Pakistan has asked both, Zardari and Sharif, i.e., to explain owning “assets beyond their known sources of income.”
For these Mafia Dons to assert that the deep state has “politically victimized” them is a trope. Both Zardari and Sharif could not produce credible evidence of commensurate income sources. In the case of Sharif, the Pakistan Supreme Court Judge (SCJ) stopped short of convicting him on corruption charges—a judge has obstructed justice to float a convict. In Dawn Leaks, Sharif’s daughter Maryam implicated State, and the previous chief of the army brushed the matter under the rug. Little did ‘innocent Maryam’ know, countries have laws that flirt with treason, and she with the State’s support has nicely escaped such charge.
Under these assumptions, the International Court of Justice, in the case of Pakistan can relate to an analogy of a bartender pouring drinks recklessly to a drunk. The man under the influence of alcohol is signing IOUs against the wealth from his inheritance and has relinquished all responsibilities to family and next of kin. The outcomes did not benefit the people.
The Serving Intoxicated Persons (SIP) Laws in the U.S. may serve guidance for why the bartender did not stop serving alcohol (in our case, to stop extending odious debt); and for a liable, to trace the “place of last drink.” The first and the last place that served odious debt to Pakistan may very well be the WB and the IMF.
In our assumed two-part favorable relief; from the first relief, Pakistan may face retaliation from the international financial community, which may not extend future credit. The second relief seems is a slam dunk award to recover theft, but ‘not so fast Jessie,’ Pakistan is likely to face collection challenges.
The world’s global North institutional system coming to rescue Pakistan’s collection efforts against Sharif’s theft is unlikely. Britain is home to a portion of Sharif’s laundered money and property. Khan’s party that ran on anticorruption election campaign has requested the British government’s assistance to remit his illegitimate wealth to no avail.
London is a safe haven for the world’s dirty cash, and Simon Jenkins of The Guardian writes, “Britain’s denial that it launders money is like Russia’s denial that it poisons spies.” In Jenkins’ article, under the Unexplained Wealth Order, all Sharif has to do is cite a source for his funds. Sharif has that source. In case, Sharif loses that slip (chit) with his sources’ name who wrote a letter for Sharif’s defense that he ‘heard as a child’ and the tale that followed; there is an additional safety net for the former Prime Minister of Pakistan to hold on to his illegitimate wealth.
The British acceptable parliamentary state-hypocrisy comes to Sharif’s rescue. It is the ‘wink’, and the ‘twinkle in the eye,’ ‘implied law’ applied in cases of stolen money and foreigners can be looked after if they pledge allegiance to the U.K.; or promise to divulge their State secrets, and help the U.K. and the West with their aims. This leaves them ample scruples to cultivate Islam phobia.
The roots of this phantom ‘implied law’ go back to the colonial days when Great Britain plundered wealth from the black and the brown people. Noting, you would think Britannia has come a long way from those barbarous days of imposed shackles of slavery into the twenty-first Century. Very little has changed. The implied law has now language—quite a transparency one would think, but the U.K. has the same old colonial aims.
The legal language safe-keeps people like Sharif. The law may find Sharif “an important asset and friend useful to the U.K.” The British immigration laws could assist with ‘accommodation scenarios’, and benefits cases subject to the “exceptional circumstances rule, ” which does not make use of the otherwise in practice, the Case Law as a staple for repeat cases in ordinary matters. The Case Law precedence is not applicable to immigration cases; help run a rouge justice operation.
Good luck in getting all the immigration scenarios or rules from the British Home Office. Should you try, you may be told, the scenarios are “so exceptional,” meaning State’s discretion is facilitated to filter the world’s ill by the ill. The world’s deplorable, irredeemable, and the convicts (the stable of kleptocrats) are ushered before the brandished tradition of ‘British justice’ into the country to bolster the U.K.’s lone financial services industry.
The U.K. cannot have a moral defense system; they never have for more than three hundred years. Think Brexit, and you have the exodus of financial services from London into Ireland, and the arrival of new influx from piracy with rapidity, makes the U.K.’s state-hypocrites salivating and slobbering; it is ‘better to be a sinner than a hypocrite.’
The ‘great’ Britannia aims will likely accommodate Sharif by their best legal reasoning, claiming, “The legal and the prosecution system are not fair and robust in the applicant’s country; they are being politically victimized,” and “the foreign country has not proved beyond doubt that the assets [of the vessels] are illegitimate.” The shameful Britannia will likely cap off their defense with a sorry set of reasoning—“We have investigated, and could not find any wrongdoing,” is quite unlike an FBI probe your Majesty.
Since Britannia has emerged from the ashes of colonialism repenting from civility, one may think these are a set of concocted legal reasons, is in fact how justice is served after benefiting from the global banking system. Then they re-launch a thief.
The benevolence in Britannia’s religion still rules supreme, “Lest he HALE (drag) thee (Sharif) to the judge […] till thou hast paid the very last mite.”
And Sharif’s alias “Patwari,” as the Pakistani nation has named him; may serve them well to rethink, and rename the alias, and get prepared for Sharif, as he pays the last mite; as he has publicly spilled beans (divulged State secret) in a recent press conference to convince his new masters of his value and his character’s arc the best fit into the Home Office’s closely guarded scenarios.
The father Sharif has played his card and sealed his daughter Maryam’s fate in hope that the immature establishment will set her free one day.
Contracts for illegal purposes are not valid. Nigeria’s asset recovery campaign repudiated sovereign debt and recouped approximately $2 billion from Sani Abacha’s family. This is just one example.