KARACHI, June 5: The Pakistan People’s Party on Monday has strongly condemned the military government’s “latest attempt to involve Ms Benazir Bhutto in trumped up cases” and described the charges levelled against her as politically motivated.

Central Information Secretary of PPP MNA Ms Sherry Rehman MNA said in a statement, issued by the party’s media cell at the Bilawal House that the regime had not only abused the judicial process by asking for red warrants in a case where the PPP chairperson was alleged to have hidden her assets, but had also made an international laughing stock of itself by asking the Interpol to be involved in the cases, which actually land in the purview of the Chief Election Commissioner’s office.

“When he has found no irregularity in her asset statements filed for the 1993 election, why is the NAB resorting to involve a district sessions judge to harass an elected popular leader of Pakistan?” asked Ms Rehman.

She also questioned the timing of the latest salvo thrown by the regime at Ms Bhutto. Referring to the reports about NAB being used to file a fresh reference against the PPP chairperson in the UN Oil-for-Food Programme scam, she asked: “When the case has already been dismissed, why the NAB is embarrassing itself by opening it up again? Pakistan’s rulers are not able to disguise their anxiety the moment any contacts between the two mainstream political parties were confirmed.”

According to the MNA, it is the rulers’ own illegitimacy that haunts the non-representative cabal running this country every time they see Pakistan’s prospects of a return to democracy.

Ever since the Charter of Democracy has been signed, the junta has become unhinged and increasingly panicky at the challenge this poses to its survival.

On the one hand, the regime tries to break the spirit of the PPP torturing its leaders like Yusuf Reza Gilani in jail, and, on the other, it unleashes a battery of fabricated cases against Benazir Bhutto. Nothing will shake the party’s resolve because we know how to face cruelty and malice at the hands of military dictators.

The PPP leadership faced with dignity and courage all politically motivated cases, and piling up case after case against Ms Bhutto is only going to make the regime look desperate and bring a bad name for the country.

Ms Rehman asked: “Why does the regime want to pour billions of taxpayers’ money into NAB’s coffers for investigations that invariably end up making both NAB and its masters look pathetic, as well as incompetent?”