Bilawal's sledgehammer breaks judges' logjam

ISLAMABAD - The budding Chairman of PPP, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, has directed the party leadership to reinstate the deposed judges without further delay, well-placed party sources told TheNation on Monday. Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, who is currently on vacations with his family in Dubai, has told his father and party's Co-Chairman Asif Ali Zardari to reinstate the deposed judges immediately as the issue was adversely impacting his political image at Oxford. Sources insisted that emergency visit of Law Minister Farooq H Naek to Dubai was linked with these developments to decide party's future course about reinstatement of the deposed judges. Bilawal Bhutto Zardai, who earlier attended party's high-level consultations held in Dubai last week, expressed his displeasure over the delay in reinstatement of the deposed judges. PM Yousuf Raza Gilani and a few ministers also took part in the crucial consultative process. PPP that is leading a four-party federal coalition government has been talking about reinstatement of the deposed judges through a constitutional package and had recently increased strength of Supreme Court judges to 29. The party has also sent copies of the draft package to the coalition partners for scrutiny and recommendations to further fine-tune it before tabling it in the Parliament. However, none of the three allies, PML-N, ANP and JUI-F, have so far forwarded their recommendations. During the lengthy process of consultations, the PPP had developed serious differences with major coalition partner, the PML-N, over the modalities on reinstatement of the deposed judges. The PPP, in the meanwhile, has stepped up efforts to expand and reshuffle the cabinet's portfolios through consultations with its coalition partners. The party has also started shortlisting party 'probables' for the cabinet slots from the four provinces and FATA. The PML-N that left the federal cabinet on May 13 as a mark of protest against delay in reinstatement of the deposed judges has rejected the PPP offers for rejoining the cabinet until its demands for reinstatement of judges was accepted.

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