LAHORE - Punjab Governor Sardar Latif Khosa on Thursday said that no PPP Prime Minister would ever write a letter to the Swiss courts, no matter how many Prime Ministers get sacked [by the judiciary] in the process.
“How many Prime Ministers will you ‘kill’, nobody would write the letter”, Khosa told the Chief Justice of Pakistan, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry while addressing party workers at a ceremony held at the Governor’s House to celebrate Benazir Bhutto’s 59th birth anniversary.
The Governor grilled the judiciary for what he called ‘selective accountability’ of the PPP. He complained why only the cases pertaining to PPP leaders were being taken up by the judiciary.
“Why don’t you decide Asghar Khan’s case first? Are you waiting for him to die and then decide the case? Why it is so that cases filed earlier in the Supreme Court have been put on the back burner? We have accepted all your decisions, but one wonders if all the decisions are meant only for us?”, the Governor sought answers to these questions from the Chief Justice of Pakistan.
On Arsalan Iftikhar case, Khosa criticised the Chief Justice for not deciding the case of his son who, according to him, had himself admitted that he had earned Rs 900 million in the last four years.
“Arsalan loses 10, 000 pounds in gambling in one night and the father is unaware of the activities of his son. The nation wants to know how a grade 17 officer became a millionaire after quitting the job”, he remarked, adding, that people also wanted accountability of Arsalan Iftikhar.
“Don’t take such decisions that history remembers you in the name of Maulvi Mushtaq and Justice Munir. Decide the case of your son and that of Shahbaz Sharif also on priority basis”, Khosa said while addressing the Chief Justice of Pakistan.
He said that there was no government and Chief Minister in Punjab under the law because Shahbaz Sharif had lost both the provincial seats.
He was of the view that judiciary had not learnt any lesson from history which was testimony to the fact that Z.A Bhutto was isolated from the people through a judicial murder. He urged the judiciary to observe neutrality in the decision making process.
Khosa also came down hard on Sharifs whom he accused of conspiring against democracy. He said Nawaz Sharif was demanding an end to the Federal government in violation of CoD. “I want to remove your misunderstanding that you would not get the chance to come to power if the process of sacking PPP Prime Ministers continues”, he told Nawaz.
Talking about the electricity crisis, he said that had the Punjab govt spent billions of rupees on power generation instead of on its failed schemes like sasti roti, yellow cab and laptops, there would have been no loadshedding in Punjab at the moment.
He said if Punjab govt had paid circular debt of Rs 6b to Federal government, span of loadshedding could have been reduced. Later, the Governor performed the cake cutting ceremony, with jialas wiping off cake before Khosa could lay hands on it.