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PPP Senator Saleem Mandviwala on Friday said a review would be filed over the Supreme Court’s restoration of corruption cases against public representatives, terming it “an extremely biased order”.
The Supreme Court had struck down some sections of the amendments made to the National Accountability Ordinance (NAO) last year by the previous coalition government on a petition filed by PTI Chairman Imran Khan.
Speaking on the DawnNewsTV show “Dusra Rukh” last night, the former Senate deputy chairman said his graft cases were decided “on merit” before the amendments were made.
“And that case was not related to the amendments. I have the entire order,” he said. “The judge had said it wasn’t a case but merely a private transaction. How can they open this case again? A court decided it, not parliament or any other place.”
The PPP leader said the review that will be filed over the apex court’s decision would be heard by a different panel, referring to a change in leadership at the court.
“This is not a joke that so many cases were decided, then there was an amendment that was passed by a majority and now you say it’s wrong. It was right for bureaucrats but wrong for politicians. What kind of an order is this?” he asked.
The senator noted that many NAB cases were decided before the amendment and there was no relation of the amendments with those cases.
Caretakers ‘PML-N in disguise’
Mandviwala also hit out at the inclusion of former bureaucrats Fawad Hasan Fawad, who was then-PM Nawaz Sharif’s principal secretary, and Ahad Cheema, who had worked with Shehbaz Sharif when he was chief minister and later as an aide when he became premier in the “so-called” caretaker federal cabinet.
He said the PPP CEC had declared the caretaker federal government as the “government of the PML-N”, adding that it also raised questions over the interim Sindh government.
“There has been a detailed discussion on the formation of the federal cabinet in the CEC,” he said. “The members have expressed serious reservations regarding it.”
The senator gave examples on how the caretaker Sindh government was allegedly working on registering cases against PPP leaders.
“Murad Ali Shah said [at the CEC meeting] what the provincial government is doing [now] was not even its mandate,” Mandviwala said. “The caretaker government’s job is only to conduct elections and day-to-day business.”
He made it clear that problems would arise if the interim Sindh government drifted away from their actual responsibilities to filing cases against the former PPP government.
“I feel that there will be problems if any caretaker government oversteps its mandate in any province,” the senator said. “Political parties will react. They will raise questions.”
Earlier, the CEC had empowered the former president to raise the issue of holding timely elections with quarters concerned and demand that the Election Commission of Pakistan immediately announce the election schedule.
This decision came after an apparent dissatisfaction with the response the party had received about an unlevel playing field.
“It is not possible here to repeat all the reservations expressed by PPP’s representatives from all over Pakistan regarding the level playing field [because] there is a context of every opinion. We presented these reservations to president Zardari to address them,” party chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari had said during a press conference at the conclusion of the two-day CEC meeting on Friday.
A participant of the CEC meeting had told Dawn that the chairman meant that Zardari would raise the issue with the PML-N and other quarters concerned on the inclusion of pro-N League people in the cabinet, as well as certain policies and projects being undertaken by the caretaker governments both at federal and Punjab level.