Pak oppn leader jailed ahead of by-elections
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s opposition leader Shehbaz Sharif, was sent to a 10-day remand in prison on Saturday after appearing before an accountability court in a housing scam case.
The incarceration essentially prevents him from campaigning for his Pakistan Muslim LeagueNawaz party in the crucial by-elections next week.
The National Accountability Bureau arrested Shehbaz, who is also president of the PML-N, on Friday after he was called to appear for a routine hearing in another case in its Lahore office.
Shehbaz was brought to court in an armoured vehicle as scores of PML-N workers tried to block the route and attempted to stop the vehicle. Authorities allowed Shehbaz’s sons, Hamza Shehbaz and Salman Shehbaz, to attend the hearing, presided by judge Najamul Hasan.
Shahbaz is accused of ordering the cancellation of a contract given to successful bidder Chaudhry Latif and Sons for the Ashiana Housing Scheme, and engineering the subsequent award of the contract to another developer, resulting in a loss of Rs193 million to the exchequer.
In court on Saturday, Shahbaz’s counsel Amjad Pervez justified the former Punjab chief minister’s cancellation of the contract. “Chaudhry Latif is an absconder in an anti-corruption case,” Pervez said. “In one case, Chaudhry Latif’s company is blacklisted.”
Hamza Shehbaz , who is the leader of the opposition in Punjab assembly, said that the arrest is a continuation of the same pre-poll manipulation used in the general elections because Imran Khan’s government is hanging by a thread of just four seats and knows that the PTI would lose the majority if free, fair and transparent by-elections are held on the 11 National Assembly seats.
Addressing a press conference at the PML-N secretariat, he said that Imran could try his hand at using NAB to influence the elections and pressurise the PML-N, but it would not stop exposing the illegitimacy and incompetence of the PTI government whatever the cost might be.
“Even after over 190 hearings and exhaustive investigation, the judge had to mention that there was no proof of corruption against (former prime minister) Nawaz Sharif. The same will happen in this case,” he added. Outside the accountability court building, party spokesperson Mariyum Aurangzeb had accused the government of “using” NAB “to take political revenge”.
Shehbaz is the eighth accused person to be arrested in the case. NAB had arrested Lahore Development Authority’s former director general Ahad Khan Cheema and five others.