Clock of immunity: Zardari to stay in country, reorganise party, says Khosa

Constitutional experts say a former president cannot run for elections or head a political party for two years.

KARACHI:

Outgoing president Asif Ali Zardari will continue to stay in Pakistan after stepping down from office next week and will supervise the re-organisation of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), Punjab’s former governor Latif Khosa said, quashing rumours that his party’s leader would be settling abroad.

“Soon after his retirement, the president will rein in the party leadership while living in the country. He will reside at Bilawal House in Lahore and Karachi. A national level convention of party leadership will be held in Garhi Khuda Bakhsh, following which the re-organisation of the party will begin in all four provinces, starting with Punjab,” Khosa, the party’s general secretary, told The Express Tribune.

While referring to Article 260 of the Constitution which bars a president from participating in politics for two years after his retirement, Khosa said, “It is very unfortunate that some constitutional experts do not properly interpret clauses of the service of Pakistan. The president will start his political career and will look into any objections, if raised.”



Buoyant about the president’s prospects after September, Khosa said that Zardari has been implicated in bogus cases. “Despite spending eight years, nothing could be proved against the president and the nature of fake cases can be gauged from the fact that nearly all co-accused have been acquitted by the courts,” he added.

A determined Khosa added that President Zardari had decided to stay in the country, come what may, and was confident that no case would be re-opened against him within the country or abroad.

However, constitutional experts disagree. According to leading jurist SM Zafar, the president’s immunity will expire on September 8, after which cases can be re-opened against him. “I think he can neither lead the party nor contest elections for about two years. There is a constitutional bar on him,” Zafar added.

Sources within the party have revealed that a major overhaul of the party is in the offing with the PPP having established contacts with enraged party leadership. “All those who were close to Benazir Bhutto, including the Abbasi brothers of Larkana, would be taken back into the party fold or persuaded to rejoin,” said a senior PPP leader, adding that soon after the president’s retirement, party leadership for Punjab and Sindh would be reshuffled.

Yet former senator and PPP stalwart Safdar Abbasi sounded a note of caution, saying that only institutionalization within the party could save it. Abbasi, a close aide to Benazir Bhutto and whose party membership has been suspended, said that “no one can lead the party from a bunker or through remote control. We have to ideally work hard to strength the party at the grass root level, following in the footsteps of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Benazir Bhutto.”

Despite his reservations and disagreement with the PPP, Abbasi still believes that the PPP is a national level political party which has been confined to Sindh due to the mistakes of the past and President Zardari’s policies.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 1^st, 2013.