National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) brought back democracy in Pakistan?
By;Asghar Ali Mubarak
ISLAMABAD: The former President Asif Ali Zardari stated that the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) brought back democracy, Nawaz, and elections back to Pakistan. Addressing a press conference in the country’s capital on other day, the co-chairman of Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) said his rivals framed him.
“Twelve cases were lodged against me during Ghulam Ishaq’s tenure,” he said. “I fought each one of them while I was imprisoned.” Zardari also claimed that each case against him was politically motivated. “I won all the cases against me but they [political rivals] dragged them for long durations as they feared not doing so would cost them their jobs,” he said. Referring to the death of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s brother, Murtaza Bhutto, Zardari said he was ‘martyred’ in order to topple Benazir’s government.”Maintenance of Public Order (MPO) was used as a premise to imprison me,” Zardari claimed, adding that he was unfairly imprisoned for a prolonged period of time.Zardari also said that the PPP had never indulged in politics of revenge and would never will neither has the party held any political prisoners during its multiple tenures.”My party never engaged in seeking revenge,” said the former president. Pakistan People’s Party Co-chairperson Asif Ali Zardari said that the next parliament would have the proper mandate to amend Articles 62 and 63.”The public representatives elected after the 2018 general elections will have the mandate to do so,” he said, while addressing a press conference. He predicted that there would be a higher number of independent candidates contesting the 2018 elections. Zardari also stressed the need for reconciliation, saying that dialogue was necessary to strengthen the parliament.”Benazir Bhutto did not take out a rally on the GT Road when she was ousted in the 90s. I saved the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) government. We have to initiate dialogue to strengthen the parliament. Everyone has the right to contest elections,” he said. He added that he was not upset with the incumbent government and was open to dialogue.”The cases against me were politically motivated. I was tortured in prison and my throat and tongue were slit. I have only now been acquitted in the last case. I defeated 12 cases and I thank God,” he said.”I was arrested after being trapped in false cases … I was transferred from Lahore to Karachi and then to Landhi Jail. It is a long story. There were fourteen cases against me, not one,” he said.”But I do not want to bother people with those stories at the moment. All I want to say is that this is not the first time this is happening to me and there have been politically motivated cases against us before,” his said.Zardari said that he did not intend to take legal action against those who had filed the cases against him. “The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) does not believe in taking revenge,” he said.The former president said that he was tortured and then accused of trying to commit suicide. “I spent more time in prison than the sentence I would have received had I been convicted in these cases,” he said. He said that Murtaza Bhutto was martyred in order to topple Benazir’s government. Talking about Nawaz Sharif, he said that when Benazir Bhutto was negotiating the National Reconciliation Order’s (NRO) terms, she had also spoken about Nawaz’s return.”I have always kept in mind the bigger picture throughout my political career. I could have formed my government in Punjab after 2008, but I let the Sharifs form theirs. Without the Sharifs, I could not have ousted Musharraf,” he added.He said electoral reforms had been carried out through the NRO, which made Nawaz Sharif’s return possible.”We are not scared of judiciary. I had all the powers for five years as president, which I surrendered voluntarily,” he said.Speaking about PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, the former president said that the Bhutto scion possessed full authority and that no one could say no to him.Zardari faced a total of six corruption references: apart from the assets reference, the former president was also implicated in the SGS, Cotecna, Polo Ground, Ursus Tractors and ARY Gold corruption references.NAB re-opened these references once Zardari had completed his term in office, but he had already been acquitted in five of the six references after a re-trial before an accountability court. Talking about the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), Zardari said the organization has a different mindset. “NAB blackmails ordinary individuals and accepts bribes to give them a clean chit,” the former president claimed. He further said that he was never accused of wrongdoings in his five- year tenure of holding office because he never held on to power and authority. “Engaging in power games only result in imprisonment and death sentences,” Zardari said. Referring to the recent disqualification of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, he said Benazir was twice removed from the PM house but a rally against the decisions was never organised by the PPP.An accountability court on August 26 acquitted Zardari in a reference pertaining to his assets, closing the last corruption reference against the former president. Mr. Khalid Mehmood Ranjha, of accountability court no 1, accepted the documents requesting acquittal of the PPP co-chairperson.
The reference filed by NAB has no legal standing, stated the court order.
After the verdict, Zardari’s lawyer Farooq Hamid Naek, while speaking to media, explained that the reference against his client was filed in 1998 under sections of Accountability Act 1997.He added said that the reference alleged that Zardari had created illegal assets.
Asif Ali Zardari was born on July 26, 1955. He belongs to a Baloch tribe, set live in settled in Sindh. Hakim Ali Zardari and He is the only son of his father, Hakim Ali Zardari, who was the tribal chief of his clan. He received his early education from Karachi Grammar School. According to his official biography he graduated from Cadet College Petaro in 1972.Asif Ali Zardari was married to Benazir Bhutto on 18 December, 1987. It was an arranged marriage, celebrated according to Pakistani culture. 100,000 people attended their marriage and it enhanced Benazir’s political position in the country. The couple had three children two daughters Asifa and Bakhtawar and one son Bilawal.After the death of his wife Benazir there was a rumor that Zardari had remarried a lady named Tanveer Zamani. However, later Zardari denied the rumor.On May, 2011 his father died. He refused to become the chief of his clan and decided to make his son Bilawal as a tribal chief.During Benazir’s first term Zardari was not associated with government but was allegedly involved in corruption cases. In 1990, Zardari and his wife were not allowed to stay in the country by the establishment. In April 1993, he became the Cabinet minister in the caretaker government. In March 1995, during the second regime of Benazir Bhutto, he became chairman of the new Environment Protection Council. He once again had to face a lot of allegations regarding corruption. When Murtaza Bhtutto was killed in September 1996, many, including Murtaza’s family, put the blame on Zardari. In November, 1996 when Benazir’s government was dismissed he was arrested at Lahore. While under arrest, in March 1997, he was elected as a Senator and was brought to Islamabad under strict security to take oath. For entire of his tenure, he remained under arrest (though he spent most of the time at PIMS, Islamabad). In January, 1998 there was a detailed report about the corruption of Zardari. He was ultimately released in 2005 and immediately decided to leave the country. He returned on the night of his wife’s assassination to attend her funeral. He did not allow the postmortem of Benazir’s body. He called for international inquiry of his wife assassination. According to the will of Benazir, Zardari was to succeed her as party leader. He made his son Bilawal a chairperson of party and himself assumed the charge of the party in his absence, as Bilawal was studying at Oxford at that time.
In spite of the pressure of the joint opposition, Zardari not only decided to contest the elections of 2008, but also persuaded Nawaz Sharif to participate in the 8th Parliamentary elections. PPP emerged as the leading party with PML-N as the runners up. Nawaz Sharif and Zardari agreed to form a coalition government. In mid- March Yousaf Raza Gillani was unanimously elected as the Prime Minister. Zardari promised Nawaz that his party would reinstate the sixty judges, previously sacked by Musharraf, latest by 30th April 2008. However, later on Zardari backed out from his promise and the coalition failed. PML-N withdrew its support for the government in May and all the ministers of the party resigned.
When Musharraf was forced to resign, Zardari decided to contest the presidential elections against PML-N’s candidate Saeeduzzaman Siddique and PML-Q’s candidate Mushahid Hussain. Zardari won the majority of votes i.e. 481 out of 702, and thus became the 11th president of the country. He took oath in a ceremony held on 9 September 2008, in which Afghan President, Hamid Karzai was invited as a special guest. In his inaugural address to the joint session of the parliament on September 20, 2008, Zardari announced to make Pakistan, once again a true Parliamentary democracy by giving back all the extra powers back to the parliament. Immediately after that, he went to New York to attend the annual session of the UN General Assembly. While addressing both the Pakistani parliament as well as the UN General Assembly, Zardari put the photograph of Benazir Bhutto on the dais in front of him. He repeated this practice during all his addresses that he ever delivered during his tenure as the President of Pakistan. Probably he wanted to give the message that he actually Benazir was the real power and he was only acting as her deputy in her absence. Though Zardari promised to reinstate the judiciary, however, his Government took no practical step in this regard until and unless the masses and the civil society of the country forced him to do so. In March 2009 the lawyers, civil society and opposition parties under the leadership of Nawaz Sharif started a long march from Lahore to Islamabad. The massive support for the march forced Zardari and his government take a decision which they otherwise were not interested in taking. Prime Minister Gillani promised to reinstate Iftikhar Chaudhry as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court by 21, March, 2009. Fifty Six other judges of the Supreme Court and different High Courts were also restored. After the restoration of the judiciary, Zardari and his team had to face a lot of problems. The independent judiciary was a big hurdle in the way of Zardari and PPP government to do things freely. The biggest boon of contention between the judiciary and the executive was the NRO case and the issue of reopening the Swiss cases against Zardari. In spite of Zardari’s promise to do it at the earliest, it took him and his government more than two long years to undo the 17th Amendment in the Constitution of 1973. The critics believe that Zardari actually was not interested in giving all the powers back to the parliament and that was the reason that he decided to become President of the Country in a parliamentary system. On the contrary, his supporters believe that such decisions should not be taken in haste. The fact of the matter is that 18th Amendment in the Constitution was passed by the parliament on April 18, 2010 and Parliamentary Democracy was once again restored in the country. However, in spite of the passage of 18th Amendment, Zardari as the President of the country remained the power hub. No decision was taken by the PPP government before the prior approval of the Zardari. He failed to act as the non-partisan representative of the Federation and continued presiding the meetings of his party in the President House. It was once again due to the interference of the judiciary that he was stopped from using the Presidency for political activities during the last days of his tenure. Both before and after the passage of the 18th Amendment, Zardari was in the forefront in running the foreign affairs of the country. He attended all the meetings with the other head of the governments, which otherwise was the duty of the head of the government in Pakistan, i.e. the Prime Minister, to attend. It was he who tried to resume the peace talks with India, visited China and tried to negotiate with Afghanistan and the United States. However, no major breakthrough in this regard can be attributed to his credit. During Zardari’s tenure as the president of the country, the law and order situation deteriorated, bomb blasts were a regular routine, secretariat violence increased and street crimes in the big cities, especially Karachi reached their zenith. In spite of the passage of joint resolution by the parliament against the drone attacks, the practice continued. During the elections of 2013, people of Pakistan voted against Zardari’s policies and PPP touched its lowest on the popularity graph. However, Sind rural cased their vote in favor of Zardari’s policies and the party managed to get more seats from the province then what they got in the previous elections.Zardari’s tenure as President came to an end on September 8, 2013. Before leaving the president house he made it clear that he would no more be interested in becoming President or Prime Minister in the future. He would reorganize the party and would help his son Bilawal to regain power. An accountability court acquitted former president Asif Ali Zardari of all reference related to his alleged unlawful assets in Pakistan and abroad over lack of solid evidence.More over Judge Khalid Mehmood Ranjha had accepted the application seeking acquittal of the former president.Speaking to media, Zardari’s counsel Farooq H Naek said that references filed against Asif Ali Zardari were politically motivated.“We thank to Almighty Allah for this victory,” he said.In a Twitter statement, PPP leader Sherry Rehman said that the Court had honourably acquitted Asif Ali Zardari from all references. “He faced 12 years of collective jail with no conviction,” she added.Earlier this month, the accountability court had reserved judgement on the petition seeking Zardari’s acquittal.The court had conducted day-to-day proceedings on the application under section 265-K of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) in the nearly two decade-old corruption reference filed in 2001 and later closed in 2007 under the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO), issued by the government of retired Gen Pervez Musharraf..Ex-president Zardari and his late wife and former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, in the reference, had been accused of acquiring assets through illegal means
