ISLAMABAD, Sept 8: People’s Party Parliamentarians (PPP) on Friday condemned the military rulers for victimising political opponents by using National Accountability Bureau (NAB) and demanded that a retired Supreme Court judge should be appointed as head of the institution.

Speaking at a news conference at the Parliament House cafeteria, PPP leaders Raja Pervez Ashraf, Naheed Khan and Senator Enver Baig said the NAB was busy in arm-twisting of the political opponents of the regime.

The PPP leaders said the recent issuance of arrest warrants for former prime minister Benazir Bhutto by a district and sessions judge, Islamabad, was also a part of the government’s campaign to malign national leaders.

The decision of the judge to issue warrants for Ms Bhutto was illegal and a worst example of political victimisation.

The PPP leaders were of the view that whenever the government found itself in trouble, it started character assassination of national leaders to divert the attention of the nation from the real issues such as Balochistan problem, poor law and order, price-hike, unemployment and rampant corruption in the country.

The PPP legislators said when the government failed to find anything against Ms Bhutto in the past seven years, it dug up a 13-year-old matter and NAB filed a case in the court of the sessions judge in Islamabad on charges of concealing assets in her declaration submitted to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) at the time of the 1993 elections.

They said it was the responsibility of the ECP to take action if any person had submitted a false statement and NAB had nothing to do with it. Raja Pervez Ashraf said NAB had lost its credibility. He said the government was weakening political parties under a planned strategy and this could be dangerous for the federation. He said the rulers had put the country’s integrity at stake.

Naheed Khan said the government had assigned the task of victimising Ms Bhutto to the deputy NAB chief, Waseem Afzal. She said one day Mr Afzal would have to be answerable before the nation for his “misdeeds”.

She said the PPP leaders and workers were not afraid of going to jails. She said Ms Bhutto had been facing charges against her in all the courts while Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz failed to give any satisfactory reply to the charges levelled against him by the opposition during the no-confidence motion against him.