HYDERABAD 05 April (Online): PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, who is also the country’s foreign minister, on Tuesday urged the superior judiciary to avoid repeating the history of pronouncing controversial orders which were motivated by politics rather than justice.
Bilawal, while addressing an event to observe the 44th martyrdom anniversary of his maternal grandfather, PPP founder and former premier Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, in Larkana, dedicated an overwhelming part of his 39-minute speech on convincing the top court judges to form a larger bench to take up the matter of holding elections in Punjab.
Earlier in the day, a three-judge bench of the SC, headed by Chief Justice of Pakistan Umar Ata Bandial, had fixed the elections in Punjab in May, declaring the Election Commission of Pakistan’s (ECP) decision to hold the polls in October as “unconstitutional”.
Bilawal said he wanted to witness when it would happen when the country’s SC would make decisions while standing on the right side of history.
“The drama being played with the nation is based on ill-intentions,” he claimed.
“We demand that to stop this constitutional crisis and to preserve democracy, the Supreme Court should form a larger bench of all the judges, except those two who were caught talking to the opposition,” he added.
The PPP leader announced that if the proposed bench decided to hold the elections even after a day’s gap, his party would accept that decision.
He argued that the country, which stood divided. would accept the larger bench’s verdict.
“If there is no ill-intention, then tell us what is wrong with this demand?” he raised the question.
He reiterated that the ruling coalition emphatically demanded that the CJP and his brother judges in the SC should save the country.
He expressed his apprehensions, saying the fight over the “throne of Lahore” would drown the entire Pakistan, its federation and economy at a time when the country was coping with unprecedented inflation, redundancy and poverty.
To top it all, he added that terrorism was rearing its ugly head again in the country.
“If the constitutional crisis continues this way, neither [Prime Minister] Shehbaz Sharif nor I, or even [PTI chairman and deposed premier] Imran Khan will be there [in power],” he warned.
“Instead, there will be another dangerous experiment, whose price will be paid by the people and its burden carried by the coming generations,” he continued.
Bilawal maintained that at present, all the institutions appeared divided because of the element of hatred in politics.
He cautioned that if hatred was not done away with, ordinary people will have to pay the price.
“I urge all stakeholders to grasp the gravity of the situation,” he continued.
The PPP leader informed the gathering that he would request PM Shehbaz to send a reference to the judiciary in continuity of the 2012 one submitted by former president and party’s co-chairperson, his father Asif Ali Zardari, to acquire justice for his grandfather, Bhutto.
He said his father went to the court again with the same case to seek justice for Bhutto in 2018, but the matter was not being heard.
“The people of Pakistan want justice for Bhutto, who had embraced martyrdom,” he added.
He recalled that his grandfather Bhutto had fought for the rights of the ordinary people, especially labourers, peasants and women.
He said Bhutto had instituted an array of reforms, giving the country its Constitution and empowering the working class.
However, he blamed the judiciary for being hands in glove with military dictator Gen Ziaul Haq in rolling back the reforms and putting the Constitution in abeyance.
Bilawal said not only had the judiciary endorsed Gen Zia’s attack on the Constitution, democracy and rights of the people; but the convictions of PPP activists by military courts including death penalties were also upheld by the courts.
He also recalled that his mother, former premier Benazir Bhutto’s government elected in 1988, was allowed in the office only for less than two years.
“When her ouster was challenged in the court, the plea was dismissed,” he added.
However, he regretted that a similar plea to restore the president-sacked National Assembly submitted by former premier Nawaz Sharif was accepted in an apparently discriminatory move.
The PPP chairman also mentioned the way the SC had vindicated the 1999 coup of Gen Pervez Musharraf and even went on to allow him to amend the Constitution in the capacity of the country’s chief executive.
During the same time, his father remained incarcerated without conviction but the courts were not bothered to take up his case until he was released in 2005, after spending 11 years behind bars.
Bilawal blamed former CJP Iftikhar Chaudhry for introducing an autocratic stream of thought in the judiciary.
“[He introduced] the one-man one show which still exists today,” he continued.
However, he maintained that parliament and the nation, which had never accepted dictatorships, would not tolerate a similar tendency in the top court.
“Now who will save the Supreme Court from the Supreme Court?” he asked.
He pointed out that an unprecedented divide was evident in the ranks of the top court’s judges, where some of them were expressing their mistrust in others.
The PPP chairman said the ruling coalition did not want to see the mistakes of ex-CJP Saqib Nisar being repeated by the incumbent one.
He wished that CJP Bandial would be remembered by history with respect as a judge who saved the country from a constitutional crisis.
“However, the danger is that because of the ego of three judges, a constitutional crisis is taking us on a wrong and perilous path,” he cautioned.
Bilawal maintained that Imran was brought to power once by rigging, but he would not be allowed to do so again using the back door.
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