NEWS ANALYSIS – The decision of Asif Ali Zardari-led Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) to file a reference with the Supreme Court (SC) under Article 186 of the Constitution to revisit the Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (ZAB) case has not only generated an intense political and legal debate, it has also raised a central question that as to what drove him seek reopening of the case thirty-two years after the former prime minister was sent to gallows. There must be a hidden method in this move even if it is conceived in proverbial madness.
The irony of history and time, however, is that the president, prime minister and law minister, who conceived the idea of seeking judicial review, are non-Bhuttos and all of them had joined the party much after ZAB was sentenced to death for the assassination of Nawab Muhammad Ahmad Khan. The family of President Asif Ali Zardari, who at that time was not in politics, was associated with the National Democratic Party (NDP) formed by Sardar Sher Baz Mazari and Begum Nasim Wali Khan after the National Awami Party (NAP) was banned in 1970s by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and all its leaders were jailed.
A staunch opponent of ZAB, Hakim Ali Zardari, the father of the president, was an active member of the NDP. The president and his family joined the PPP after mid-1980s around the time he married Benazir Bhutto.
The family of Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani had long been associated with Pakistan Muslim League (PML) and actively participated in the Pakistan movement. Gilani started his political career under the shadow of General Ziaul Haq and was made member of Majlis-e-Shoora in the early 1980s. When the political parties supporting the Movement for Restoration of Democracy (MRD) boycotted the 1985 elections, Gilani was elected member of the National Assembly and appointed as federal minister in the cabinet of Muhammad Khan Junejo. Gilani joined the PPP in 1988 after the dismissal of Junejo’s government.
Similarly, Law Minister Babar Awan was also not a member of the PPP and nor was he in any way a supporter of its ideology. His hatred for ZAB is evident from the fact that he had distributed sweets when the PPP’s founding chairman was hanged. The residents of Rawalpindi and those who know him still remember the time when he had celebrated ZAB’s hanging. He became a PPP jiyala when Nahid Khan had introduced him as a lawyer to Benazir Bhutto in 1990s. It was the time when he had also got close to Asif Zardari and contested corruption cases against him in the courts.
The Bhutto family ruled the national politics with Benazir Bhutto twice becoming the prime minister of the country but it never opted to seek a judicial review of the case because while such a move would possibly endorse the party and the family’s position, it would at the same time render the Sindh card ineffective forever. Though there is a general consensus across Pakistan that the judgement in the ZAB case was ghastly, Benazir Bhutto and the party termed the hanging “a judicial murder” for political gains and never sought reopening of the case to put the record straight.
Only one of the four children of ZAB – Sanam Bhutto – is alive but a non-Bhutto son-in-law has taken this strategic decision understandably for political reasons on two counts: a) build pressure on the Supreme Court by using the Sindh card as the apex court is about to take up some high profile cases including the one related to the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO); and b) prepare for the next election using ZAB’s legacy as a lynchpin to galvanize the PPP and Bhuttos supporters to ensure an equally large space on future political landscape.
The move may face some pitfalls on the way to judicial review and the reference could possibly fire back as the critics say that in case the Supreme Court does not allow reopening of the case on technical grounds declaring it non-maintainable, the 1979 decision of the court against ZAB would unmistakably stand endorsed. In this situation, the “party leadership” would once for all lose its political claim that Bhutto’s hanging was a judicial murder. This, however, will leave the party with an option to use the Sindh card and cash in on this situation for next election.
But it all depends on how the Supreme Court handles this politically delicate case which is also likely to divide the nation between the pro-Bhutto and anti-Bhutto besides reviving the politics of confrontation and pitching the province of Sindh against the judiciary.
Analysts say that the timing of filing this reference is intriguing. They say if there is no political motive behind this move, the appropriate time to seek a review of the ZAB case was when Justice Abdul Hameed Dogar, a pro-PPP judge by every inch, had headed the Supreme Court. However, they consider the decision to approach Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry-led Supreme Court at a time when the popularity of the government and the party is at the lowest ebb as politically-motivated to save the PPP’s ship against the raging tides.
