Abbasi was convicted on a charge of misusing 500 kilogrammes of the controlled chemical ephedrine just four days ahead of the grand vote of July 25 on the plea of someone thought of as a ‘serial petitioner’ in a case no less than six years old. The verdict was announced by the Control of Narcotics Substances Court (CNS) of Rawalpindi in the odd mid-night hours resulting in an unanticipated life imprisonment, and with the sentencing, also came the lifetime disqualification to run for any public office. All this — coupled with the fact that a similar case against former federal minister Makhdoom Shahabuddin and former prime minister Yousaf Raza Gilani’s son Ali Musa Gilani has been pending with the same court since 2011 — only served to strengthen the PML-N’s claims of ‘selective accountability meant to rig the elections.’
Hence, more than the verdict itself, what allows room for suspicion is the timing and the manner in which it was delivered, only to help the former ruling party to flash the victim card even more vociferously. The verdict does give an impression of a walkover in NA-60 for Sheikh Rashid — a staunch ally of Imran Khan, Sharifs’ bitter rival. The postponement of the vote by the Election Commission comes in as a bid to nullify this impression of bias against the former ruling party. Remember Abbasi is the fourth PML-N leader who stands disqualified from the elections, with the other three being Maryam Nawaz, her husband, Capt (retired) Mohammed Safdar, and Danyal Aziz.
Published in The Express Tribune, July 24th, 2018.
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