Swiss letter will be written after Sept 18: Manzoor Wassan

ISLAMABAD:

Following the Supreme Court’s adjournment of the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) case, there were strong indications on Monday that the government is considering abiding by an earlier court order to write a letter to Swiss authorities to reopen graft cases involving the president.

But it is not hitherto clear whether the proposed letter would explicitly seek the revival of the two-decade-old cases against President Asif Ali Zardari.

Pakistan Peoples Party’s (PPP) apparent ‘change of heart’ was evident in former Sindh home minister Manzoor Wassan’s talk who declared: “The letter to Swiss authorities will be written after September 18 when the next hearing of the case is scheduled in the Supreme Court”.

While talking to the media at the Islamabad airport, Wassan said that writing the letter was part of a strategy under which the PPP is seeking a way out of a lingering confrontation with the judiciary.

This is the first time that a PPP leader has publicly expressed intention to write the letter to Swiss authorities against the president and it comes in sharp contradiction to the official position the party has so far maintained on the issue.

Until Monday, the PPP leaders had been ruling out the possibility of writing the Swiss letter, arguing the president enjoys immunity under Pakistan’s Constitution and international laws as head of state.

Though Wassan later attempted to downplay his statement, there were other developments and assertions to suggest that PPP might be thinking on different lines.

Immediately after his appearance in the apex court, Premier Ashraf directed some of the hostile party leaders, including Punjab Governor Latif Khosa, to stop issuing statements against the judiciary.

Information Minister Qamar Zaman Kaira also told journalists outside the court that the government would abide by the judiciary’s order.

Political suicide?

But PPP insiders say that it was only Law Minister Farooq H Naek who is insisting on writing the letter to Swiss authorities, arguing it won’t make any difference because closed cases against President Zardari could not be reopened under any circumstances.

His argument, according to sources, is that it is better that the PPP government write the letter and not leave it either to the interim administration or the one that would come to power after fresh parliamentary elections take place.

PPP leaders said President Zardari and other party leaders were not in favour of writing the letter, asserting that it would hurt them politically especially when the elections were around the corner.

“It is going to be a political suicide… We are not going to do that,” a senior PPP leader told The Express Tribune, adding: “The party has rejected the law minister’s viewpoint because it was in isolation, taking into account legal aspects of the issue and not just the political one.”

Another option, the PPP official added, was that the Premier Ashraf would tell the court that he was ready to write the letter but it would be dispatched once Zardari’s term as president is over.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 28^th, 2012.