Amin Fahim claims the case against him is ‘politically motivated’

The federal commerce minister addresses media in Matiari.

HYDERABAD:

The president of Pakistan People’s Party Parliamentarians, Makhdoom Amin Fahim, termed his implication in the National Insurance Company Limited (NICL) scam as ‘politically motivated’, while speaking in Matiari district on Friday.

Fahim, who is also the federal commerce minister, claimed that the Supreme Court was bidding its time. “I had said that it’s a political case and that they won’t hear me on March 11 - the date initially set for the hearing,” he said. “Now the hearing has been postponed till after the end of the government’s tenure, on March 19.”

Fahim, who kicked off his election campaign by addressing a public meeting in Bhanote, faces disqualification if convicted in NICL corruption scam.

He claimed that the court didn’t hear his lawyers out. “Tickers of the remarks made by judges were running on television, but they didn’t let my lawyer speak.”

Home turf

The unassailable Makhdooms of Hala will be seen defending their four-decade long electoral invincibility during the upcoming elections. Defections by old lieutenants and supportive communities suggest a simmering resentment that can become a formidable alliance, led by Pakistan Muslim Leauge-Functional, against the Makhdoom family.

This was the first public address delivered by Fahim since Pakistan People’s Party took power. Fahim won the only National Assembly seat in the district and a seat in the provincial assembly in the 2008 general elections.  His son, provincial minister Makhdoom Jameel-uz-Zaman, was elected from the second Sindh Assembly seat.

He warned the party’s defectors to either “leave by March 19 before they were sacked by the party.” Refering to veteran politicians like Ali Ahmed Nizamani and Nazir Rahu who parted ways with the Makhdooms to join PML-F, he said that “some of our friends are misleading members of our party”. Nizamani has a lot of influence in the rural areas of Hala taluka and Rahu in the Saeedabad taluka. “They should first leave PPP and then confront us,” he added.

The new alliance also has the support of the Memon Itehad and Khaskheli communities. Awami National Party, Sindh Taraqi Pasand, Sindh United Party and other nationalist parties also part of the allinace which is led by PML-F’s Syed Muhammad Ali Shah Jamote, the former district Nazim of Matiari.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 17^th, 2013.