PM Gilani charged with court’s contempt
Monday, February 13th, 2012 1:52:15 by Mursil Mehmood Butt
PM Gilani charged with court’s contempt
The Supreme Court of Pakistan has charged Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani with the contempt of court on Monday, February 13. However, the Prime minister was not considered guilty of the charges that could remove him from his office or jailed him for six
months.
PM Gilani was convened in SC over the government’s two-year failure in requesting the Swiss authorities to re-open corruption cases against the President Asif Ali Zardari.
While reading out the charge sheet, Judge Nasir ul-Mulk stressed that, Gilani has “wilfully flouted, disregarded and disobeyed” Supreme Court’s order to re-open the cases against Zardari.
After reading the charge sheet, Mulk asked Gilani, “Do you plead guilty?” and the PM said, “No,” adding that he will give his further statement in writing.
The court directed Attorney General to file the documents by Thursday, which the court will examine on February 22. The court asked Gilani to file his response by February 27 and a list of potential witnesses, expressing that the evidence will be collected
from Gilani’s lawyer on February 28, which is just three days before the March 2 Senate elections.
The hearing ended hardly after half an hour while the court exempted PM Gilani to appear before the court until further notice.
While responding to the questions about rumours of finding PM Gilani’s replacement, Information Minister, Firdous Ashiq Awan said, “Comments about a new prime minister are premature. The president has immunity.”
A high ranked PPP official, Qamar Zaman Kaira said, “For the first time the prime minister has been charged. It’s a sad day in the history of Pakistan.”
According to an editorial of an English newspaper, “The prime minister’s actions reek of protecting the president over our system of democracy.”
“Even if the president’s immunity is upheld, it will no longer be applicable once he is out of office and in that eventuality there may be no legal or constitutional hitch in preventing the Supreme Court from going ahead on this issue.”
That is the observation held by numerous commentators outside the SC, who considered this action as a must one in order to maintain equality and rule of law in Pakistan.
Tags: beyonce, Firdous Ashiq Awan, Information Minister, Judge Nasir ul Mulk, Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani, Qamar Zaman Kaira, Supreme CourtShort URL: https://www.newspakistan.pk/?p=12518
Posted by Mursil Mehmood Butt
on Feb 13 2012. Filed under Latest News.
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Punjab recently saw the dengue epidemic, which was followed by the new issue of deaths due to spurious medicines. Hundreds of people died in both cases. Government servants were terminated at the time of the dengue issue and government servants are being terminated for being involved in the spurious medicines issue as well. But no one tends to look at the root cause of both the issues. Be it the Intermediate results discrepancy or Young Doctors Association protests, no one tends to concentrate on the origins of these problems. Many issues of this nature have been brought to the limelight in a couple of months. The ‘Khadim-e-Aala’ Punjab is in control of over a dozen ministries, which is not humanly possible for a single person to look after. Almost 20 departments are working without their heads and Chief Minister Punjab Shahbaz Sharif expects them to work efficiently? A department can only work properly in the presence of its head. No matter how inefficient your party’s members of the provincial assembly may be, but if given a chance, they can surely handle the affairs better than one single person. The head of a department is responsible for all the slackness of its department, so why does Mr Sharif not terminate himself rather than the civil servants? Please do us all a favour and distribute the ministries among your party members and make them devise ways to strictly implement the laws. It will be the biggest favour you could do for your people.