'Guilty' Ghafoor to continue as Minister Prisons
By: Ch Aamer Waqas
LAHORE - The PML-N government will give a ‘free hand’ to Provincial
Minister for Prisons to resume his office after the Party leaders
are expected to given him a verbal thrashing, and secure an
assurance that he will act ‘lawfully’ in future, after the Minister
has lobbied successfully for getting himself back on the ministerial
track.
Party sources have confided that the N-League leadership had decided
to let the minister off the hook after he was made ‘dysfunctional’
on the 22nd of the last month because of his misconduct at the
Allama Iqbal International Airport. Moreover, senior leaders are
still playing cool despite the submission of the report by tribunal
on May 28. However, nothing official has been made public so far,
except an issuance of a handout concluding ‘it is not necessary that
the allegations levelled against someone should prove true in every
investigation report.’ Declaring the Minister ‘an honourable public
representative’, the handout mentioned, ‘accountability does not
mean that the allegations should forcefully prove to be true’.
When quizzed about the specific reason for Minister’s survival, a
source seeking strict anonymity hinted at Ghafoor’s connections with
the Sharif family. “No doubt, his standing in the Party is pretty
low, and does not enjoy an outstanding stature within the N-League.
However, he certainly has tangible ‘links’ which have helped him
come out as a survivor,” he said, while opining that the PML-N was
expected to take a stringent action since it had not spared Sharif’s
decades old associate Haji Pervaiz Khan. “People at large were
expecting Ghafoor’s exit, and it would have definitely given a huge
image uplift since the Minister does not enjoy good reputation even
in his constituency, which is just virtually in the neighbourhood of
Mian Sahab’s residence,” he added.
“Apparently, this has also turned out to be so because of his hectic
efforts at persuading the Sharif brothers through good offices of
certain quarters for taking a lenient view of his ‘misconduct’
despite the fact the 3-member tribunal had found him guilty,” said
the source, while deploring the moral degradation of his colleague.
“He should have resigned himself instead of lobbying for keeping his
Ministership - considered to be the first casualty as part of his
punishment - and holding paid rallies outside the Raiwind residence
of the PML-N leadership,” he opined.
The Nation:
Published: June 05, 2009 |
