JI lawyer found wanting on certain points

Panama Papers case

ISLAMABAD: Shrewd and well-read lawyers, having sharp memory, possess intellect and brain to impress brilliant justices of the Supreme Court with their meaty, succinct arguments otherwise they ought to face discomfiture.

In an exceedingly vital case that the instant petitions against Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his children on account of offshore companies and London apartments is, the senior attorneys who appear before the judges are required to be super alert about every fact they present, every assertion they make and need to do immense home work to project their case.

However, Jamaat-e-Islami chief Sirajul Haq’s lawyer Taufiq Asif was found wanting about certain points and rudimentary facts during his submissions, calling for the premier’s disqualification that was not his original prayer. In reality, in his petition Sirajul Haq had not named the premier as a respondent and rather urged the top court to direct investigating agencies to launch a probe into the Panama scandal, arrest the suspected culprits, recover the public money and bring it back to Pakistan because it was illegally taken to offshore companies. However, later in an application he sought Nawaz Sharif’s disqualification under article 62. The reason for the change of mind is unclear.

Although Justice Sheikh Azmat Saeed pointed out to Taufiq Asif that his case was different from that of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), the attorney, going by the tide, focused on Nawaz Sharif’s speech to the National Assembly and concluded that it contained the premier’s confession. “We are searching for the confession in the address you have talked about. Where is it?” the judge asked inquisitively as it didn’t have that.

At another stage of his arguments, Taufiq Asif stated that the premier admitted in his speech that the London flats were purchased by him from 1993 to 1996. The bench head, Justice Asif Saeed Khosa, asked where the premier said so in his address. Why the bench would have been hearing the case if Nawaz Sharif had stated that, he remarked.

The lawyer also claimed that the London properties were mentioned as Nawaz Sharif’s flats in the Zafar Ali Shah case in which the apex court had legitimized the October 1999 martial law imposed by Pervez Musharraf.

Justice Ejaz Afzal remarked that this was a submission of the then Attorney General that could not be used against the Sharifs. The Supreme Court had not attached any importance to such arguments in its decision, he observed.

Justice Khosa remarked that Sharif's ownership of the properties was not established in that case. "You are referring to the arguments made by the lawyer, not a precedent set by the court.”

Justice Azmat Saeed said obviously in a lighter vein: “The arguments you are making are tantamount to some assertions of Naeem Bokhari, asking us to include arguments made in another case. You have made incorrect statements. Should we apply article 62 or 63 to you?”

Yet at another level the lawyer made a slipup about a hard fact when he claimed that Nawaz Sharif was a party in the Zafar Ali Shah case. This prompted the premier’s vigilant lawyer Makhdoom Ali Khan to interject to clarify that his client was not the party in that case. Taufiq Asif had to recant his claim. Justice Gulzar Ahmed asked him not to take the case in a non-serious manner.

These disconcerting inaccuracies apart, Taufiq Asif vehemently stressed that the premier should be disqualified for what he claimed ‘lying’ in his speech. His tone and tenor was quite akin to that of Naeem Bokhari, which nonplussed the chief defendants as one of the federal ministers later said that it was beyond comprehension as to which side Sirajul Haq was. It is clear that what Taufiq Asif argued was sanctioned by his client.

Some new points emerged while some old facts were reiterated during Friday’s proceedings. One of them was that there was no law or code of conduct that imposed embargo on the prime minister to do business while holding the coveted office. However, the incumbent premier delinked himself from the business in 1997. Justice Khosa referred Nawaz Sharif’s interviews and observed that his business and politics continued to coexist side by side till 1997. Unless the conflict of interest is established mere allegations of the premier’s involvement in business would not take the petitioner anywhere, he told the lawyer.

Another fact was repeated that it was yet to be established whether the Sharifs owned their London properties before 2006. Yet another pertinent observation was that a verdict can’t be delivered on the basis of assumptions.

When Taufiq Asif will resume his arguments on Monday, he will hopefully come with intensive preparations matching the importance of the case and the challenge he faces to impress the judges about his cause. It may be instructive for most attorneys to take a leaf out of the book of Makhdoom Ali Khan, who raised a number of new constitutional and legal points and remained relevant and to the point during his protracted submissions before the same bench. At no stage was he found incorrectly quoting any constitutional clause or the case law.