Aitzaz comes out against Asif, says most cases against him were justifiedCategory: Current Affairs
Written by: Amend Foster (on June 02, 2008 - 02:47 PM)E-Mail Article to a Friend
For the first time since Asif Ali Zardari took over as co-chairman of the Pakistan People's Party, Barrister Aitzaz Ahsan has come out in the open and claimed in an interview to the New York Times that most charges of corruption against Benazir Bhutto and Asif Zardari, and charges of kidnapping, ransom and murder on Asif Zardari, were justified.
Below is the news report that has been published in the Daily Dawn today:
NEW YORK, June 1: Barrister Aitzaz Ahsan, President of Supreme Court
Bar Association and a leader of Pakistan People’s Party, has severely
criticised his party’s co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari for dragging his
feet on restoration of the judiciary because he “doesn’t want
independent judges”.
In a highly volatile and extensive interview with the New York Times
magazine (Ahsan was on the cover of the magazine), he said that most
charges of corruption against Ms Benazir Bhutto and Mr Asif Ali Zardari
were justified. It may be mentioned that Barrister Ahsan was the
minister of interior in the first government of Benazir Bhutto.
The author of the article, James Traub, writes: “I asked him (Mr Ahsan)
how many of the allegations of corruption he believed were justified.
“Most of them,” Mr Ahsan said, after a moment’s reflection.
“The type of expenses that she had and he has are not from sources of income that can be lawfully explained and accounted for.”
In the interview which was conducted over a week, James Traub said that
Mr Ahsan recognised that the PPP was itself a feudal and only
marginally democratic body led by a figure accused of corruption and
violence.
Mr Ahsan, who defended both Ms Benazir Bhutto and Mr Zardari in 14
cases, told Times that the charges of “corruption against both” and in
Mr Zardari’s case also of “kidnapping, ransom and murder”, were
justified.
“Ahsan”, said the interviewer, “is almost recklessly outspoken about
PPP leaders, even though they are his own political patrons. He speaks
admiringly of Benazir Bhutto’s courage and steadfastness but also
points out with disdain that she viewed herself as the PPP’s ‘life
chairperson’. And he does not bother to conceal his dim view of
Zardari.”
Besides, the Times article said, Mr Ahsan believed that in the
aftermath of the Lahore incident, wherein he saved former federal
minister Sher Afghan from the wrath of the people ‘that he is more
famous in the country than at any other time’.
“And I have become much more famous.” The thought tickled both his
vanity and his sense of irony. “I’m being treated,” he said, “like the
policeman who’s rescued the cat from the tree”.
On Mr Ahsan’s decision not to contest polls, Traub said: “I spoke to Mr
Ahsan by phone a few days later. He had decided not to contest a
by-election slated for this summer. He had decisively chosen movement
politics over party politics, and perhaps he was happiest there. Mr
Zardari and the PPP seemed to have increasingly thrown in their lot
with Mr Musharraf, appointing allies of the president to key posts. Mr
Ahsan wasn’t worried that a new round of protests, this time directed
in part at his own party, would divide the country.
“There’s enormous popular support for my position,” he said. And he
was, as ever, blithe in the face of confrontation. “I’m comfortable,”
he reported from his home in Lahore. “I have no problem.”
On the issues of judges and confrontation between Mr Zardari and Mr
Ahsan, Traub relates: “On the morning flight from Karachi to Sukkur, a
city in the southern province of Sindh where the Pakistan People’s
Party high command was going for an annual pilgrimage to Zulfikar Ali
Bhutto’s grave site — now that of his daughter as well —Ahsan was
approached by Farooq Naek, the law minister and a party leader. Naek,
according to Ahsan, asked him to mute his harsh criticism of Zardari
and the party. Zardari had reached an agreement with Nawaz Sharif to
reinstate the judges within 30 days of the formation of the new
government, and Naik implored Ahsan to show some faith and trust. Ahsan
agreed to act as if he accepted their bona fides, though he didn’t
altogether.
He says he believed that Zardari feared that Chaudhry and other
apolitical judges might restore some of the cases against him that had
been summarily dismissed. Ahsan seemed quite blithe about these
concerns.
When I asked if he worried that the lawyers could be blamed for
splitting the fragile coalition, he said, “if the party doesn’t act, it
will force a debate inside the party, and that would be a good thing.”
That night he pushed Zardari hard at the party’s conclave near the
Bhutto family grave site; Zardari pushed back, insisting, according to
Raja Adil Bashir, a party official, that the lawyers “should not try to
threaten the government.”
Source: Dawn.com
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