LONDON, Aug 4: Former prime minister Benazir Bhutto has decided to approach the courts in Pakistan to seek relief in what she claims to be concocted cases of corruption against her.
Soon after the conclusion of the fortnight-long parliamentary board meetings of the People’s Party Parliamentarians, Ms Bhutto reportedly went into a closed-door session with her lawyers Latif Khosa and Farooq Naik to discuss the details of each case.
The two lawyers, summoned from Pakistan for the purpose, have left for home with instructions to approach the courts and get the cases quashed or to get her a blanket pre-arrest bail.
Party sources said Ms Bhutto was planning to return home soon after Eid, around Oct 25, and, therefore, would like the courts to allow her to be free to lead the PPP’s election campaign.
When asked why she did not approach the courts earlier, the sources said that until July 20 the courts themselves were fighting against the highhandedness of a military dictator and then Ms Bhutto was busy chairing the parliamentary board meetings.
When asked if Ms Bhutto had decided to approach the courts because she had failed to get any relief from President Pervez Musharraf under the deal that she was supposed to be discussing with him, the sources answered in the negative.
They also did not agree with the suggestion that Ms Bhutto had been encouraged into deciding to approach the courts by the relief given by the superior courts to Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) leader Javed Hashmi and the fact that former prime minister Nawaz Sharif had also gone to the courts seeking their permission to return home. “Our timing of going to courts is not linked to these cases,” they said.
They said the two lawyers had also been told to approach the superior courts if the Election Commission announced the schedule for re-election of the president from the present assemblies.
When Dawn asked a constitutional expert from Pakistan, Fatehyab Ali Khan, who is on a private visit here, if there was any way the president could, without imposing emergency or martial law, stop the superior courts from giving a ‘negative’ ruling in case someone approached it against his re-election by the current assemblies, he answered mockingly: “Yes, he can do it by issuing an order like the one he did to increase the salaries of the judges on Friday and curtail the tenure of the chief justice to three years with retrospective effect.” But he hastened to add that the courts would throw out such an order on the first hearing.
