ISLAMABAD, July 22: The government is apparently trying to find a scapegoat after the Supreme Court set aside the reference against the Chief Justice, with many eyes now being fixed on Attorney-General Makhdoom Ali Khan.

Since the filing of the reference, there is a debate about who should own up the responsibility and step down. Political leaders have demanded President Gen Pervez Musharraf, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and Law Minister Wasi Zafar should resign.

But many government functionaries believe that the attorney-general was primarily responsible for the mess.

An official told this correspondent that the attorney-general was ‘on his way out for mishandling the reference’ and he was mainly ‘responsible for presenting a weak case and for a lacklustre performance during the hearings’.

He said the attorney-general also failed to point out flaws in the affidavits submitted by various government functionaries, which turned out to be charge-sheets against the government itself.

According to him, one of the affidavits even led to the disclosure that phones of the judges and their relatives were still being tapped by the intelligence agencies and the court was compelled to direct intelligence agencies to debug the judges’ residences.

He conceded that while the Chief Justice was ‘forced’ to leave the President’s Camp Office on March 9 in a flag-less car ‘by the people more loyal than the King’, but stressed that it was not done on the president’s orders. He said the CJP was initially asked to ride a private car but when he refused to do so, he was allowed to sit in his official car without a flag, despite the government’s insistence that he was still the Chief Justice of Pakistan.

An attorney-general is appointed under Article 100 of the Constitution and continues to hold the office as long as the president deems it fit. The duties of an attorney General include giving advice to the government on legal matters, and performing other duties of a legal nature as may be assigned to him by the federal government.

Attorney General Makhdoom Ali Khan, who is currently in Karachi, was not available for comments.

Rumours are also making rounds in the capital that the federal minister for law and justice, who insisted that his ministry was ready to file a new reference against the Chief Justice, might also have to quit. Wasi Zafar says he will resign only if the Supreme Court’s detailed judgment finds him responsible for filing the reference.

One of the government’s lawyers, Ahmad Raza Kasuri, is on record to have stated that he would have resigned, if he had been the law minister. Another counsel Justice (retd) Malik Abdul Qayyum had gone to the extent of stating before the Supreme Court that Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz “will resign if the reference is not upheld by the court”.