Party leader says PPP will win next polls if court accepts plea; To get a two-thirds majority if plea rejected riding the sympathy waveAs the Supreme Court announced forming a larger bench to hear the presidential reference for reopening the Zulfikar Ali Bhutto case, the PPP government finalised its strategy to use the reference as a ‘double-edged’ weapon against the superior judiciary.
Any court decision on the reference would be used as a catalyst for winning public sympathies for the PPP government which has lost public confidence due to its malfunctioning.
Background interactions with top PPP leaders have revealed that the reference was to be used to mobilise the general public against the superior judiciary if the court termed it “non-maintainable”.
“We will win the next polls if the court accepts our plea and terms the Bhutto hanging a judicial murder or a decision closer to that. But if the court rejects this reference, we will get a two-thirds majority in next elections riding the sympathy wave,” a top leader and the brain involved in the preparation of the reference told Pakistan Today.
Another PPP stalwart said the reference would prove to be a dilemma for the judiciary and any decision taken over it would harm it.
Moreover, a sharp contrast between the extraordinary enthusiasm and interest shown by the PPP stalwarts towards the hearing of the ZA Bhutto case and total ignorance and lack of attention to court proceedings of Benazir Bhutto assassination case raises many questions – but no PPP leader comes out to explain the same.
However, in an off-the-record conversation and quite interactions, some cautious and concerned PPP leaders called the contrast “very strange and hazardous” for the party as everybody knew and was convinced that ZA Bhutto was given an unfair hearing and his verdict was more of a judicial murder. But, there was a lot to be probed and unearthed in the Benazir Bhutto assassination case.
The PPP leaders claim that the PPP chief ministers, provincial and federal ministers, MNAs, senators and MPAs had been directed by the PPP leadership to ensure their presentation at the hearing of Bhutto case in the Supreme Court premises but no one has been seen at the Adiyala Jail where the in-camera hearing of the case was in process.
Most of the PPP ministers did not even know what the dates of the hearing of Benazir Bhutto murder case were and claimed that they could not attend the hearing.
