Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: Former president and co-chairman of Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Asif Ali Zardari has condemned the statement of Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif accusing the Supreme Court of partiality and discrimination and holding only the Sharif family accountable as “irresponsible, contemptuous and unacceptable” and demanded that Shahbaz withdraw and apologise his unwarranted and provocative remarks.

“It is shocking that from the picture of Hussain Nawaz appearing before JIT Shahbaz Sharif should have concluded that the Supreme Court was aiming only at the Sharif family”, he said in a statement issued on Friday.

Those who bemoan that “this child was made to sit there” would do well to recall how the twice elected prime minister Benazir Bhutto would sit on brick piles outside jails with small children in her arms seeking justice. The PPP then did not accuse the Supreme Court for training guns on the party, he said.

Even when Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was assassinated through abuse of judicial processes it never said that the Supreme Court had trained its guns on the Party.

The rulers should also recall the inhuman brutalities inflicted on their political opponents in the name of investigations in cooked up politically motivated cases that eventually did not stand judicial scrutiny and the accused were set free.

The PPP believes in across the board accountability of all but at the same time it will not permit subverting the lawful investigative and judicial processes to escape accountability, he said.

Zardari also urged members of the bars and the legal fraternity to take notice of the chief minister’s threatening and derogatory remarks.