ISLAMABAD: PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari said on Tuesday that his party was standing firmly on its stance regarding the formation of the new government and was only answerable for its own position on the matter.
Talking to the media outside the Supreme Court (SC) following the hearing of the Zulfikar Ali Bhutto presidential reference, the PPP leader said he was aware that the current political instability was negatively impacting Pakistan. He added that the PPP however, wanted to wrap up the process of government formation as soon as possible.
Bilawal said the presidential reference was a ‘test’ for the judiciary, as he said the chief justice himself admitted. Terming his 1979 death sentence a “judicial murder”, he hoped all these years later the apex court would do justice in the case.
“We cannot call it a bygone and say that we did not receive justice,” he said, adding that he hoped the judiciary would “wash itself off this stain, and overwrite the country’s history”.
Referring to his mother, famed former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, he said that Bhutto’s daughter might not have got justice. However, speaking of himself, Bilawal said that his grandson would.
The PPP leader further maintained that struggles take longer than just one day. Bhutto’s “judicial murder” happened during a dictatorship. He asked if the court’s judgment in the Bhutto case was “safe”? “If not, how do you solve a situation like this?” he added.
“Hope this presidential reference will help rectify the past,” said Bilawal.
The case
A reference was filed on behalf of former president Asif Ali Zardari on April 2, 2011, for an opinion on revisiting the death sentence awarded to the former premier under the Supreme Court’s advisory jurisdiction.
It was filed before the top court under Article 186 (1 and 2) of the Constitution, which empowers the president to refer any question of public importance to the SC to seek its opinion on an issue.
The reference was last heard by an 11-judge panel, headed by then chief justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, in Jan 2012.
In March 1978, a four-member bench of the Lahore High Court awarded a death sentence to Bhutto, which was later challenged in the top court. In a four to three split verdict, a seven-judge SC bench upheld the sentence during the military regime of the then-army chief Gen Ziaul Haq in March 1979.
He was hanged to death on April 1, 1979.
