PPP has 5 options if PM is convicted

DAILY TIMES

The Pakistan People’s Party-led coalition government has evolved ‘star-strategy’ with five options to deal with any situation emerging out of an ‘unfavourable’ Supreme Court decision against Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani today (Monday). It has decided to stick to its stance of ‘no apology, no excuse’ over reopening of corruption cases against President Asif Ali Zardari.

Gilani will personally appear before the apex court along with leaders of the coalition parties, the PPP sources confirmed. The coalition partners have ensured the PPP leadership that they would appear before the court along with the prime minister, party sources informed Daily Times on Sunday.

On last Friday, the Supreme Court had rejected Gilani’s appeal seeking to withdraw contempt of court charges, which the apex court levelled against him over his failure to reopen Swiss cases against President Asif Ali Zardari.

The PM has a constitutional stance on the issue that the president enjoys immunity in the country and abroad so he will not write a letter to Swiss authorities in this regard.

If the court found the PM guilty of contempt charges, he may face disqualification from his office and membership of parliament and a jail sentence.

The party, with the consent of the coalition partners in the government, is in a position to nominate a new PM as it had several candidates within parliament, including Khursheed Shah, Makhdoom Amin Faheem, Ahmad Mukhtar and Makhdoom Shahbauddin, the sources further informed.

They said that the central leadership of the party had considered all five options about the court decision on the contempt issue with its coalition partners as well as the core team members and agreed to follow the star-strategy.

In the first step of the strategy, it was planned that the PM would not apologise to the court on his stance about writing a letter to the Swiss authorities in any case and if the court would convict him (PM), the PM would immediately announce his resignation from his office and the parliamentary membership while President Zardari will pardon him later and his punishment will be ended.

According to the second option, if the apex court convicts him, he would not resign from his office as he could continue his premiership in the jail too till his disqualification from the assembly and soon after the verdict of the court against Gilani, President Zardari would pardon the PM using his discretionary constitutional powers and remove his conviction.

Under the third option, if the court sends the PM to jail convicting him in the contempt case, National Assembly Speaker Fahmida Mirza will issue production orders and the prime minister will attend assembly session as its member.

The fourth option is that if a reference of disqualification is forwarded to the speaker, she would not forward it to the Election Commission and the PM could keep his membership till the end of the five-year term of the government.

The last and fifth option which was considered by the party is that after the conviction and resignation of Gilani in the case, a new PM would be announced from the PPP one after another - as it had 127 members in the National Assembly - sticking with the same stance of presidential immunity before the court, the sources said.