Re: Musharraf’s treason trial
Brother, I did explain that in my last post (not in detail, as I believed all know the details). Anyhow, as you asked, than please read carefully:
NRO was not blanket ordinance to withdraw all cases on politicians and bureaucrats. According to NRO, if sitting government (or panel of government lawyers for the purpose) would consider that a case was politically motivated and is going on for years than government can withdraw the case. On this ground, anyone who considered that their case was politically motivated and running for years, could have asked for review of their case. Many such cases were withdrawn. Zardari Switzerland case was also withdrawn by government, declaring that case as politically motivated.
Then Iftikhar jumped in and declared NRO null and void from day one. SC told government that only parliament can pass such law, and if government wants NRO to be valid than they should get NRO presented in parliament and get it passed from parliament. SC also gave a time period to the government for the purpose. I think date given by SC to government for presenting NRO in parliament and getting it approved (by simple majority), was early Nov 2009.
Government did not presented NRO in Parliament as they had no support from MQM for the purpose. At the time, without MQM support, PPP was minority in Parliament. MQM was not in agreement with NRO and had opinion that all cases should be cleared through court in proper manner. You can say that NRO did not become law because of MQM opposition. Once time period given by SC passed, all withdrawn cases got restored.
As for Zardari case in Switzerland, it was withdrawn by Pakistan due to NRO. Iftikhar wanted to restore Swiss case, but was unable to do anything other than request government to write letter to Swiss authority asking them to restore the case.
Government of Pakistan told SC that they would not write letter, and SC told government that not writing letter would be ‘tauheen-e-Adaalat’ (contempt of court). Pakistan government told SC that to ‘go to hell’. In process, Prime Minister Gillani lost his job.
In Swiss law there was time limit to restore case. Pak government kept delaying until time limit passed. After that, government sent a vague letter to Swiss authority and succeeded in not getting case restored.
That is why I wrote that … Zardari benefitted from NRO as initially his case was withdrawn due to NRO.
But I also wrote that (in the end) Zardari did not benefit from NRO … as SC made NRO null and void, so as far as Pakistan was concerned, Zardari case got restored (and should have got restored in Switzerland also).
Zardari benefitted because corrupt PPP government did not pursue the case, against SC ruling. For that, PPP sacrificed their PM on ‘contempt of court’ charge, but they did not budged.