The federal cabinet approved a set of five questions of law that the government will submit to the Supreme Court for its opinion in the Zulfikar Ali Bhutto reference case filed by President Asif Ali Zardari.
Information Minister Firdous Ashiq Awan told the media on Wednesday that the questions would now be part of the reference filed by President Zardari under Article 168 of the constitution. The apex court, during the hearing of the reference, had asked the government’s counsel, former law minister Babar Awan, to frame specific questions on which the president wanted to seek the court’s opinion.
Awan will be submitting the set of questions before the court today (Thursday) when it will resume the hearing.
The information minister said that the cabinet had invited Babar Awan in its special meeting so he could brief it on the legal and constitutional aspects of the reference as well as the proceedings before the Supreme Court. Awan informed the cabinet that the Supreme Court’s proceedings were progressing satisfactorily.
The objective of the reference, the counsel said, was to correct for the statutes and legal history what he – and the president – view as an error in judgment because a “judicial murder” of the chairman of a premier political party and founder of the country’s constitution had been committed.
The information minister said that Babar Awan had also highlighted the international significance and history of such high profile cases before the Cabinet.
She said that it was the objective of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) to get the superior judiciary to undo the wrong that Bhutto had been subjected to.
As far as the political victimisation of the PPP is concerned, the masses have made up for it by voting the PPP back into power time and again, she added.
Published in The Express Tribune, April 21st, 2011.
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