LAHORE: Senior PPP leader Aitzaz Ahsan says he sticks to his statement in which he had stated Chief of Army Staff Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa had rescued the Sharifs from certain cases.

“I stand by my statement as I believe that the institutions must not involve themselves in [power] politics,” the former senator told a press conference he held here on Thursday to deny reports that he was deserting the party to join the PTI.

He said some fake news was doing rounds that he was sitting in Banigala to join the PTI at a time when he was in Lahore and Imran Khan was in Sargodha.

Referring to an audio leak in which he was supporting the PTI leader, he said a certain group was propagating that his name would be presented as the caretaker prime minister by the PTI.

Rebuffs reports of deserting party

As if to substantiate the claim, he said, this group presented his statement in which he had stated that Imran Khan could again return to power within a month.

The senior lawyer said that he had declined the offer of prime ministership back in 2007 made by then military ruler Gen Musharraf on the condition that he would dissociate himself from the lawyers movement to get Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry restored as the Chief Justice of Pakistan.

In a hint that he had differences with the PPP on certain issues, Mr Ahsan said having political differences within the party is a routine because it is a democratic party.

He said the PPP was the only party in the country that didn’t use ‘religion card’ in its politics.

He told a questioner that he had no personal grudge against the Sharifs. Rather, he said, he had represented the family when no other lawyer was ready to fight their case soon after Gen Musharraf had imposed martial law in the country.

He recalled that Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto had rather urged him to do become a counsel for the Sharifs when he told her that late Begum Kalsoom Nawaz had approached him for the purpose.

Replying to a query, he said that Imran Khan is a good person and his next-door neighbour for around five decades in Zaman Park, where the presser was held.

With the PPP too, he said, he had lifelong association and could not think of quitting it at any time.

Published in Dawn, October 21st, 2022