Pakistan’s Ambassador to the US Husain Haqqani is known as a masterful propagandist. This is one of his weaker efforts:

He [Haqqani] said in a petition filed by Advocate Sohail Qasier Hasan that the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) had ‘maliciously and playfully’ abandoned a case against him by putting it without his consent in the array of applicants seeking relief under the NRO and had now put his name on the list although he had never applied for relief under the ordinance.

Let’s leave aside for now how NAB can be both malicious and playful. It’s proving quite a task to unwrap the logic of Haqqani’s argument. For the two years since the NRO was introduced by Musharraf, the ambassador had no problem being maliciously played around by NAB. Fair enough. Haqqani only turned against the NRO when it was publicly revealed that he had benefited from it, a hypocritical stance certainly, but a sin of which every politician is guilty.

What’s incomprehensible is the logic behind Haqqani’s move. Why is he eager to have his name removed from the NRO retroactively? Does he want the case against him to be dismissed because it was earlier dismissed without his wanting it to be dismissed? And in the history of jurisprudence has that ever been grounds for quashing a case?