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Sharif fires salvo at government, India

ISLAMABAD: The former Pakistan Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, who took pride in his chosen role of “friendly Opposition” and promised support to President Asif Ali Zardari, especially in the present crisis with India, has suddenly opened fire against the government on a range of issues.

On Wednesday, following a meeting of the party’s top leadership, the Pakistan Muslim League (N) leader indicated he was still with the government in its dealings with India, but raked up several other issues, including that of the deposed judges and his long-standing demand for repealing a Constitutional amendment that makes the President more powerful than Parliament.

He also made an astonishing disclosure that immediately turned up the political heat on Mr. Zardari and the PPP-led government, even as they are preoccupied with satisfying international demands for action against the perpetrators of the Mumbai attacks while reassuring domestic audiences that there will be no “”surrender” to India.

Mr. Sharif told a press conference the government had approached him with the request not to take up cudgels against Chief Justice Abdul Hameed Dogar, and in return the election disqualification cases against him and his brother Shahbaz Sharif would be dropped.

Mr. Dogar, who replaced the deposed Chief Justice, Iftikhar Chaudhary, and is reviled by large sections of the legal community and civil society, is presently embroiled in a controversy over the award of extra marks to his daughter in her school-leaving exam, which enabled her to apply to medical school.

According to The News, which first reported this about three weeks ago, undue favour was shown in awarding the 21 extra marks, in violation of established procedures.

Mr. Sharif said the government had offered him a “trade-off” in this matter.

“Some days ago, in this very place, I said the Chief Justice should resign. Two days before that, a person who I will not name came to me, and said a trade-off can be done: say nothing about the wrong committed by Chief Justice Dogar to get his daughter the extra marks, say nothing against him, and the cases pending against Messers Nawaz Sharif and Shahbaz Sharif on their disqualification will be decided in their favour,” he said.

The allegation caught the government off guard. Attorney-General Latif Khosa told journalists that Mr. Sharif should come out with the details. Information and Broadcasting Minister Sherry Rehman denied that anybody from the government had ever made such an offer to Mr. Sharif. Demanding that Mr. Dogar resign without “even a minute’s delay,’ Mr. Sharif said his party would raise its protest against him through Parliament, and take the issue to its “logical conclusion.”

The sudden change in the party’s attitude will increase political pressure on the government during a particularly difficult time in relations with India. But on that front, Mr. Sharif has not yet said anything critical of the Zardari government, reserving his criticism for India’s handling of the situation, but that too in mild terms.

He said India had shown “undue haste” in going to the U.N. Security Council for listing Jamat-ud-Dawah as a terrorist organisation.

“I wish the Indian government had tried to resolve the situation with Pakistan. The Pakistan government wants to — we are not in government but we are also keen to get to the bottom of the Mumbai attacks. Such attacks should never recur anywhere in the world, not in India, not in Pakistan, nowhere. Such attacks benefit no one. Our wish is that we should sit together and identify the culprits, but India took a different route and went in haste to the Security Council, which was in a way a complaint against Pakistan. It would have been better had this not happened,” he said.

Pakistan has a “positive desire” for good relations with its neighbour, he said, adding that “India should have trusted the leadership of Pakistan.”

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