Islamabad: Chief Justice of Pakistan Mian Saqib Nisar directed the government to determine what action it was going to take against two former chiefs of army and Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) for their role in the rigging of the 1990 elections that kept Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) out of power.
Although Pakistan SC gave its verdict in the case after 16 years in 2012, directing the then PPP government to take necessary action against former army chief, General Mirza Aslam Beg and former ISI chief, Lieutenant General Asad Durrani, but no legal action was taken against the convicted generals. The chief justice asked the government to summon a cabinet meeting within a week and decide whether the guilty should be charged under Article 6 of the Constitution or not. Article 6 deals with high treason.
In 1996, late former air force chief, retired Air Marshal Asghar Khan, had filed a human rights petition in the apex court accusing the ISI for disbursing funds to buy the loyalty of politicians and public figures so as to manipulate the 1990 elections by forming an alliance of parties, Islami Jamhoori Ittehad (IJI) (Islamic democratic alliance), a nine-party alliance, under the leadership of former PM Nawaz Sharif. The strategy turned out to be successful and Benazir Bhutto’s PPP was defeated in the polls.
A list of recipients who had received money included prominent politicians, including three former PMs, Nawaz Sharif, Muhammad Khan Junejo and Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi besides former CMs and several federal ministers. In the petition, Khan had accused the two military men for corrupting the democratic process.
In his written statement in the SC, Durrani had said that then army chief Gen Beg had directed him in September 1990 to provide logistic support to transfer to the IJI the money donated by some Karachi-based businessmen during the election. According to Durrani, he was told that the move had the government’s support.
