LONDON, Oct 17: PML-N President Shahbaz Sharif has termed Benazir Bhutto’s criticism of the Supreme Court in her Dubai press conference “unfortunate” wherein she had chosen to cite her ethnicity as a reason for discrimination by the apex court.
“The reality is that a former prime minister from Sindh is being allowed to return tomorrow without let or hindrance whereas a former prime minister from Punjab was denied this right on 10th September,” he said in a statement on Wednesday.
The PML-N president said that being committed to the Charter of Democracy he was constrained to criticise Benazir but would like to remind her that the baggage carried by the Sharif family into exile contained their clothes and “not dollars belonging to the people of Pakistan”.
Mr Sharif said that former prime minister Nawaz Sharif had never made any deal with General Musharraf and was exiled through an understanding with and on the wishes of a brotherly foreign country.
“This understanding was not at the cost of Pakistan’s interests or its people’s wealth as was the case in the National Reconciliation Ordinance deal which was made directly with a military dictator to legalise plunder,” he added.
The PML-N president took exception to Ms Bhutto’s reference to the bogus cases against Nawaz Sharif and said that the former prime minister was tried by what she used to refer to as “kangaroo courts” and was dubiously sentenced in the ‘helicopter case’ and not in any tax evasion case as mentioned by her.
“It is for this reason that Nawaz Sharif never bothered to appeal against this so-called conviction as the judiciary had not acquired sufficient strength or independence to defy the dictator at that time,” he said.
Mr Shahbaz Sharif said that his party welcomed Ms Bhutto’s return to Pakistan as it was her right and hoped that in future she would at least abide by those clauses of the Charter of Democracy that relate to the code of conduct between signatories.
“It is important to lay the foundations of a healthy political culture and bury the bitterness of the past,” he concluded.
