Shahbaz elated at dismissal of NAB’s plea in Hudaibiya case

ISLAMABAD: Of the Sharif family members, Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif is naturally more elated over the trashing of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) relating to the Hudaibya Paper Mills case because of his enhanced future political role. The rejection of the NAB appeal by the Supreme Court turned out to be a slap on the face of those who have been stressing ad nauseam day in and day out that the case will definitely entrap the entire Sharif family in it.

The Hudaibiya Paper Mills case that was haunting the Sharif family for the past 17 years is now closed for ever as the apex court was not even slightly impressed with the exuberance of the NAB to reopen it. Rather its prosecutor continuously received severe drubbing from the judges for his implausible arguments. None of the justices was convinced of the NAB plea as all the judges handed down the unanimous ruling. The case was being used for witch-hunting of the Sharif family, and was instituted by Pervez Musharraf during his military rule to victimize it. The sword of Damocles was hanging on its head although the reference became dead and buried after the Lahore High Court (LHC) had rubbished it three years back.

The NAB never had any plan to file the appeal and its outgoing chairman Qamar Zaman had told the Supreme Court during proceedings in the Panama case point blank that as per the opinion of his prosecutor general he had not disputed the LHC verdict and would not do so. When pressed to submit the appeal, he had refused to oblige and had stuck to his previous determination. When a peculiar environment, targeting the Sharif family in the name of accountability, was created before and after the July 28 judgment of the five-member bench that disqualified Nawaz Sharif, the NAB also fell in line and woke up to approach the top court. Even the Panama ruling had not directed the NAB to appeal against the LHC verdict and had left it to the anti-graft agency to call it into question or not.

Even several months after the Panama verdict, the NAB decided not to appeal against the LHC decision. However, it was pushed hard by certain quarters to dispute the LHC decision in any case as part of the campaign to steamroll the Sharif family. It surrendered to the pressure. The three judges’ determination – trashing of the NAB appeal – is clearly against the minority judgment of Justice Asif Saeed Khosa in the Panama case. The NAB’s dancing to the tunes set by circles stood exposed when it filed the appeal. However, its enthusiasm was knocked down by the present bench, which attached no weight to the NAB’s extraordinary excitement.

This is the first relief that the Sharif family has got from the Supreme Court specifically after the Panama decision.

The ruling brought particular respite to Shahbaz Sharif because he is set to be the next prime minister should the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) win the upcoming general elections. This decision was taken after Nawaz Sharif’s disqualification.

Almost all the members of the Sharif family including Nawaz Sharif, Hamza Shahbaz, Maryam Nawaz, Nawaz Sharif’s mother, the widow of his deceased brother Abbas Sharif and some others figured in the list of the accused in the Hudaibiya Paper Mills case.

The Sharifs’ detractors were very optimistic that the whole Sharif family will be entangled in this case, which will tremendously add to its hardships. They had been trying to prompt the apex court to allow the NAB to reinvestigate the case.

None of the three justices forming this panel was from Punjab. Its head Justice Mushir Alam hailed from Sindh, Justice Mazhar Alam Khan Miankhel from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and Justice Qazi Faez Isa from Balochistan unlike the Panama bench, which had three judges from Punjab and one each from Sindh and KP.