The newly-appointed co-chairman of the Pakistan Peoples Party, Asif Zardari, has decided to bring back, Aitzaz Ahsan, who has been under house arrest since November 3, 2007.
Benazir’s husband wants unity within the party and wants to benefit from Aitzaz’s intellectual input
LAHORE: The newly-appointed co-chairman of the Pakistan Peoples Party, Asif Zardari, has decided to bring back into the mainstream the former interior minister and the president of the Supreme Court Bar Association, Aitzaz Ahsan, who has been under house arrest since November 3, 2007.
Well-placed sources within the PPP said that Asif Zardari had a detailed telephonic conversation with Aitzaz, courtesy Bushra Aitzaz Ahsan, the wife of the detained PPP leader, who had gone to Larkana to offer his condolences on the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. During his conversation with Aitzaz, Zardari underlined the need of complete unity within the party ranks in the time of crisis and said he wanted the PPP to benefit from Aitzaz’s intellectual input.
Aitzaz felt alienated when the PPP leadership, which was involved in power-sharing talks with Musharraf, tried dissociated itself from him following his decision to plead the dismissal of Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry by Musharraf.
A few months later, following the proclamation of emergency, Aitzaz Ahsan and his party leadership seemed poles apart when he supported an election boycott by the lawyers’ community until the deposed judges were restored.
At the same time, his party leadership had not only decided to participate in the polls, but had also indicated that it was ready to work with Musharraf despite the fact that he had sent the ‘meddlesome’ judges home. The PPP sources say Asif Zardari has realised that Aitzaz has unjustifiably been pushed to the wall, although he was still a part of the PPP. He has therefore decided to exert the pressure of the party to ensure the release of Aitzaz so that he is freely able to work for the PPP.
President Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA), Aitzaz has emerged as a major force in the lawyers’ movement. He rose to unprecedented prominence after March 9 when he took over the case of the suspension of Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry. From then onwards, he kept making waves until he was sent behind bars on November 3 last year when emergency was imposed and the constitution was put on hold. On the insistence of the lawyers’ community, who favoured a boycott of the polls, he had even withdrawn his candidature for a National Assembly seat from Lahore, which he was contesting on a PPP ticket and was sure to win.
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