Aitzaz sees Gilani-like fate for PM Raja

Former Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) President and Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) leader Senator Aitzaz Ahsan on Monday said that Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf, if opts not to write the letter to the Swiss authorities, will face a fate not different from that of the former prime minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani who was disqualified from premiership as well as the National Assembly membership.
Talking to media outside the Parliament House here, he said there is no middle path in connection with the Swiss letter, as the seven judges of the bench did not leave any adoptable course in between and the five-member implementation bench cannot go for any new pathway.
“A new premier will sit at the helm of the affairs, if the incumbent one is sent packing. And, the same string of events will continue till March 2013,” Aitzaz maintained.
Aitzaz Ahsan, who was the counsel for former PM Gilani in the renowned contempt case before the apex court, reaffirmed his stance that there is no such precedent where a state produced its president to the court of another state; hence, the apex court, of its own accord, should give a second thought to its verdict in this regard.
Terming it a welcome development that Raja Pervez Ashraf was given a 22-day breathing space in the NRO implementation case, Aitzaz underscored that the court did not manifest such magnanimity during his arguments during the contempt proceedings against Gilani.
The court, Aitzaz Ahsan believed, has realized that the Gilani verdict was delivered in haste.
Replying to a query, Aitzaz – one of the top advisers in the government’s legal team – said President Asif Ali Zardari enjoys immunity not as a person but as an incumbent president and the court is bound to respect this immunity.
“I am quite satisfied over the reinstatement of independent judiciary as a result of lawyers’ movement otherwise former president General (Retd) Pervez Musharraf would have been sitting as a uniformed president had this movement did not bear fruit,” he remarked.
Seeing no imminent threat for the parliament’s dissolution, he asserted that it is only the premier who could sent an advice to the president in this regard.
Raja Ashraf did not approach me to plead his case, as I have already lost the case, Aitzaz said, meekly urging the premier to take some other counsel for the case.