Al-Azizia reference: PTI assails Punjab govt for ‘suspending’ Nawaz’s sentence

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) on Tuesday blasted the caretaker Punjab government for suspending the sentence of deposed prime minister Nawaz Sharif in Al-Azizia reference, saying a caretaker setup which is already governing the province illegally for the last ten months, set an example of worst political engineering to save the skin of a “convicted criminal”.

Speaking at a presser, Shoaib Shaheen, the senior member of PTI chairman Imran Khan’s legal team, demanded the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to take notice of the “illegal” step taken by Mohsin Naqvi-led provincial government of Punjab for suspending Sharif’s sentence in Al-Azizia reference.

“The whole system has been exposed as it’s doing whatever possible to save the skin of a convicted and disqualified man [Nawaz Sharif]...why the ECP is acting as a silent spectator, and when that glorious day will come when it will wake up from deep slumber,” he lamented.

The independence of the country’s judiciary has seriously been eroded as no one takes notice of what is going on in a bid to save a convict, he said, adding the rotten system where the poor could not make ends meet but people at the helm of affairs are being looked after at a cost of $ 18 billion per year.

But the irony is that those who are supposed to protect the masses are moving from pillar to post to protect a convicted absconder, he said, adding a day ago, the sister of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) judge died, but the next morning he had to be in the court to approve the bail of a convict.

“Who forced the NAB judge to rush to the court despite knowing that he’d lost a sibling to be in the court? A convict who made the courts in the country a joke and kept enjoying overseas for four years, but he was given protective bail within no time despite not being present in the court,” he regretted.

He said the courts should not come under illegitimate pressure, and warned: “or else you [courts] are hand in glove in reviving the doctrine of necessity applied by Molvi Tamizzuddin to save the skin of a convicted criminal [Nawaz Sharif], like he did to validate Governor General Ghulam Muhammad’s coup d’etat”.

He categorically said that if the judiciary kept taking dictation and made compromised decisions under pressure from a mafia, history will remember them like it remembers Justice Munir – a controversial chief justice of Pakistan, who had validated the extra-constitutional use of emergency powers by Governor General Ghulam Muhammad in 1954.

He said that Mohsin Naqvi-led caretaker government suspended a case against Sharif, which is a sub judice matter, adding “caretaker set up is neither a court nor it has any authority”. “If this is what you are authorised to do, then suspend the sentence of all the criminals.

Why it is Nawaz Sharif only? The caretakers are already running the province illegally for the last 10 months and now they are taking such decisions which do not fall in their purview,” he lamented.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2023