Bilawal Bhutto calls for judicial reforms, month after Pak's apex court terms his grandfather's conviction mistrial

KARACHI: A month after Pakistan's Supreme Court observed that the conviction of former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was the result of a mistrial, his grandson and ex-foreign minister Bilawal Zardari Bhutto has said that the time had come to introduce judicial reforms.

Last month, Pakistan's Chief Justice Qazi Faez Isa-led Supreme Court bench concluded that Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) founder Bhutto's conviction in 1979 was the result of a mistrial.

The hearing was based on a special case sent in 2011 by then president Asif Ali Zardari to the Supreme Court to revisit his father-in-law Bhutto's conviction for abetment in a murder case and his eventual hanging in 1979.

Addressing party workers and supporters at an Iftar on Thursday in Larkana district on the occasion of the 45th death anniversary of the late Bhutto, Bilawal said that the PPP would ask the new federal government to undertake such judicial reforms.

"It is time to initiate judicial reforms. The PPP will ask the federal government to undertake these reforms,” the PPP chairman told the gathering.

“We want to provide speedy justice to the people. We want to fulfil our promise,” Bilawal, the PPP chairman was quoted as saying by The Express Tribune newspaper.

Bilawal recalled that his mother and former prime minister late Benazir Bhutto had made the judicial reforms an integral part of the Charter of Democracy (CoD), which was signed with Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) supremo Nawaz Sharif in May 2006.

In collaboration with the PML-N, Bilawal claimed, that 90 per cent of the CoD had been implemented, including the restoration of the 1973 Constitution in its original form and giving rights to the provinces.

The PPP is supporting the PML-N-led government by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif after the February 8 elections.

“Any work that is left undone, so far, is the part pertaining to the judicial reforms,” he was quoted as saying in the report.

The PPP chairman suggested that his party, which is an ally of the PML-N government at the Centre, would take measures in parliament to fulfil the promise of reforms made in the CoD.

“We should bring changes in the Constitution and the law… so that we can provide justice to the people of Pakistan,” Bilawal said.