Before the assassination: ‘Benazir was about to reveal Musharraf’s rigging plan’

Governor Latif Khosa says Benazir was hours away from revealing Musharraf's plan the day she was assassinated.

TALAGANG/CHAKWAL:

As the political battle for Punjab heats up, Governor Latif Khosa appears to have joined the ranks of PPP leaders who have been lashing out at their party’s political opponents, alleging on Monday, for instance, that former prime minister Benazir Bhutto had been hours away from revealing former president Pervez Musharraf’s plan to rig the 2008 elections on the day she was assassinated.

“A PPP special committee had compiled a 600-page dossier to disclose Musharraf’s plan of marginalising the PPP’s mandate through rigging. The committee was scheduled to meet and present the report to visiting US senators but Benazir Bhutto was assassinated that very day,” said Khosa while inaugurating a National Registration and Database Authority (Nadra) registration centre in Chakwal district.

Khosa, who claims to have been on that committee, said that the dossier was available on the PPP website. The Express Tribune however, was not able to find any such dossier on the PPP’s official website, www.ppp.org.pk.

Khosa lambasted Punjab’s ruling PML-N for trying to launch a movement to topple  the PPP-led government.

“They are afraid of the PPP’s success in the upcoming elections,” said Khosa, in what appears to be a reference to the March 2012 Senate elections where the PPP is expected to win at least a strong plurality if not an outright majority in the upper chamber of parliament.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 18^th, 2011.