ISLAMABAD: With the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) opposed to the constitution of a commission to probe the Panamagate scam, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his legal team were keeping their cards close to the chest on Thursday as they said they would disclose their decision only before the Supreme Court when it will resume hearing the case on Friday (today).

Though there was no official word from the government or the prime minister’s legal team as to what would be their reply to the Supreme Court’s proposal for forming the one-man inquiry commission, informed sources said that Mr Sharif was unlikely to make any suggestion and would leave the matter to be decided by the five-judge bench itself.

After a meeting of the PTI’s senior leaders on Thursday, the party announced its decision that it was opposed to the formation of the inquiry commission.

Dissatisfied with the way the parties had developed their case over nine days of proceedings, the Supreme Court had on Wednesday proposed constituting the commission to hold an extensive inquiry into the matter.

PM’s lawyers to reveal stance today

The PTI had sought time for holding intra-party consultations when the bench headed by Chief Justice Anwar Zaheer Jamali asked the counsel for PM Sharif and PTI chief Imran Khan to come up with their stances after seeking instructions on the court’s proposal.

“There is no need for any commission. The incumbent bench is capable and competent. All the material is already before the judges,” the PTI chief declared during a media talk outside his Banigala residence.

He said they would request the judges to hold the hearing on a day-to-day basis to get the nation out of the eight-month-long crisis. He said it was the desire of the country’s 200 million people that the present five-judge bench should itself decide the case. He said one of the party leaders had suggested that they should accept the commission only if the prime minister tendered resignation.

Mr Khan said the party’s legal team headed by Naeem Bokhari would request the judges to decide the matter after hearing the arguments of the PM’s counsel and providing the PTI an opportunity to give its response to that.

Flanked by party’s vice chairman Shah Mehmood Qureshi, secretary general Jahangir Tareen and Awami Muslim League head Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, the PTI chief claimed that the prime minister had already lost the case when his lawyers declared before the court that the speech made by their client on the floor of the National Assembly was a “political speech”.

Mr Khan said the prime minister in his speeches had claimed that the London flats had been purchased after selling their steel mills in Dubai and Jeddah, but he had failed to produce any document showing the trail of money used to purchase the London property.

He said the documents submitted by the government team showed that the steel mill set up by the prime minister’s father Mian Muhammad Sharif in Dubai — which was sold in 1980 — was actually running in losses. He said the steel mill in Dubai was incurring a loss of 2.6 million dirham. He expressed surprise over the reply given by the PM’s counsel that “someone” had compensated the loss.

The PTI chairman alleged that the prime minister had lied before parliament when he stated that he possessed all the required documents showing the trail of the money used in setting up the steel mills in Dubai and Jeddah and then in the setting up of offshore companies revealed by the Panama Papers leaks.

PM team’s stance

Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Law Barrister Zafarullah Khan, when contacted, said the Supreme Court had powers to make a decision about the inquiry commission. He said the prime minister had the “total and absolute trust” in the Supreme Court and would accept its every decision,

Another senior member of the prime minister’s team said that they had intentionally decided to keep ambiguity over the matter. He, however, said that like the PTI, the government also wanted to see an early conclusion of the case as it did not want to let the PTI exploit the Panamagate issue for political gains. He said it was the government which had asked the court to hold hearings on a day-to-day basis.

Published in Dawn, December 9th, 2016