Islamabad: The Pakistani legal experts and political commentators are confused about the duration of the Nawaz Sharif’s ouster from active politics. Sharif was on Friday disqualified from office by the Supreme Court which sent his case to an anti-corruption court for trial in the Panamagate graft scandal.
Is the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) chief disqualified for life, or is there a possibility of him staging a comeback? This big question has created confusion amongst the Pakistanis.
According to Pakistan-based prominent media outlet DAWN, when the question about the duration of the 67-year-old veteran politician’s ouster from Pakistan’s active politics was put to seasoned lawyers, some said the question needed to be addressed since it has remained unanswered for far too long.
Tariq Mehmood, former president of the Supreme Court Bar Association, told the newspaper that a larger bench of the Supreme Court was seized with a number of cases, including those of Samina Khawar Hayat and Mohammad Haneef, in which the moot point was to determine whether disqualification under Article 62(1)(f) of the Constitution was perpetual or not.
Former chief justice Anwar Zaheer Jamali, hearing one of such cases, had wondered how anyone could be disqualified from participating in elections forever on the basis of articles 62 and 63, saying people could reform themselves to be qualified under the provisions at some point of time.
Senior lawyer Raheel Kamran Sheikh recalled that former prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani was disqualified on June 19, 2012, from parliament for committing contempt of court under Article 63, which specified disqualification for five years.
Unfortunately, under Article 62(1)(f) no period of disqualification has been specified, he said, but endorsed what Mehmood observed.
Beleaguered Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif resigned on Friday after the Supreme Court, accusing him of dishonesty, disqualified him from holding the post following a probe that exposed illegal family wealth stashed abroad.
The Panama Papers leaks of April 2016 revealed that three of Sharif’s children owned offshore companies and assets not shown on his family’s wealth statement. This was apparently used to channel funds to acquire foreign assets, including in London.
The court has recommended that anti-corruption cases should be registered against several individuals including Sharif, his daughter Maryam and her husband Mohammad Safdar, Sharif’s sons Hassan and Hussain Nawaz as well as Finance Minister Ishaq Dar.
The judges ruled that the prime minister had been dishonest to Parliament and the courts and could not be deemed fit for his office.
Brother of ousted Pakistani PM Nawaz Sharif seen as successor
Pakistan’s ruling party plans to appoint the brother of ousted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif as his successor to fight the 2018 general elections, local media reported on Saturday, but will first have to appoint an interim prime minister. Shehbaz Sharif, 65, the chief minister of the vast Punjab province that accounts for more than half of Pakistan’s 190 million people, will need to be first elected to the national assembly before he can take over as leader of the country.
Bureau Report
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