‘Nawaz Sharif paid price for not removing Articles 62, 63’

Raja Pervez Ashraf says these laws were introduced by dictators

LAHORE: Pakistan People Party (PPP) had been convincing ousted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to remove Articles 62 and 63 of the constitution because they were introduced by dictators, but he was determined to keep the legislation intact.



This was stated by former prime minister and PPP leader Raja Pervez Ashraf. Ashraf said PPP had expressed its reservations to Nawaz, claiming these articles were merely included to blackmail politicians.”However, the former PM paid no heed and has now been trapped himself.”

“There are different standards for everyone. The names of PPP’s top leaders were put on the Exit Control List (ECL) in the past, but nobody had the courage to do the same with Nawaz,” he said.



He was talking to the media at an accountability court after the hearing of a reference on Tuesday. The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) had filed the reference against him, alleging that Ashraf had illegally recruited more than 400 employees in the Gujranwala Electric Power Company (Gepco).



Ashraf’s counsel, Advocate Iftikhar Shahid, told the court that the documents submitted by NAB were incomprehensible due to the poor quality of the printouts. Therefore, he asked the court to direct NAB to provide more intelligible documents.

The court, while accepting the plea, fixed September 19 as the date for hearing and directed NAB to submit fresh documents.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 16^th, 2017.