By Farhatullah Babar
Press Spokesman to Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto, Islamabad, Pakistan
By using terms like in pursuit of greed and short-term monetary gains and massive looting of the national treasury (Benazir Bhutto’s Future, Pakistan Link Nov 16) the writer has not only chosen to condemn Ms Bhutto unheard but also ignored Pakistan s Supreme Court verdict and many other facts in various cases against her and her husband.
Ever since the dismissal of her government in 1996, Ms Bhutto has been fighting to clear her name and has insisted that the charges against her were politically motivated.
Her position was vindicated recently when the country’s apex court ruled that the judge who convicted her of kickbacks, commissions and corruption in a pre-shipment inspection contract, was biased. Ruling that the bias floated on the surface of the record the Supreme Court remanded the case.
The stinging endorsement by the Supreme Court that the trial judge was taking directions from the sitting Prime Minister and his accountability chief forced the disgraceful exit from the Bench of the judge together with another Supreme Court Judge.
Chaudhry Shujaat Husain, who served as interior minister in Nawaz Sharif’s cabinet, has publicly stated that there was no substance in the drug case against Senator Zardari and that the case was fabricated at the instance of the Accountability chief who even went to the extent of seeking to transfer the boss of the anti-narcotics organizations of the time
And a judicial inquiry commission headed by a judge of the Supreme Court cleared her husband of the charge of involvement in the murder of her brother Mir Murtaza Bhutto.
It is distressing that such facts did not find any mention in a harsh verdict passed unilaterally by the author.
By Abdulhaq, Buffalo, NY
Ms Banazeer Bhutto, as her name suggests, is a unique person. Rather than returning to Pakistan to face corruption and abuse-of-power charges, she has left the country and remains, in what is euphemistically described as, “self-exile”. Her views and statements on the struggle of the Kashmiris are decidedly anti-Pakistan. As for her “struggle to return Pakistan to democracy,” may one remind her that her father, whose name she often exploits, served the first dictator of Pakistan loyally and dutifully for ten years.