ISLAMABAD: The PPP has demanded that ailing former president Asif Ali Zardari be shifted to hospital as he requires medical treatment.

“The treatment of Mr Zardari despite there not being a single charge that has been proven against him has exposed the government’s true intent of using the rhetoric of accountability as a tool for their own political gains.

“The PPP has never been afraid of accountability but the government cannot use it as a tool to silence and target their political opponents,” PPP’s Parliamentary Leader in the Senate Senator Sherry Rehman said in a statement.

“We should not forget that President Zardari has spent 11 and half years in prison before without any conviction. We will not be silenced and will keep raising our voice against a system where dictators accused of treason do not appear in courts for years while the politicians go to jail pre-trial and on cases pending investigation,” she said.

“Doctors from all sides including NAB are saying he is not in a condition to be kept out of the hospital. This poses a clear risk to his life and the government should know that if God forbid something untoward happens to him, they will be known as murderers,” she said.

Senator Rehman alleged that the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) was being pressured not to disclose Mr Zardari’s medical reports and doctors have had to give in to pressure to shift him to Adiala jail even though his condition requires that he be given proper medical care.

“His doctors have informed his daughter, Aseefa Bhutto Zardari, that three of his arteries are blocked and that spinal issues that he developed in his previous incarceration have resurfaced. The government will be responsible if its rigidity causes his health to further deteriorate,” Senator Rehman, the party’s vice president, said.

“A swarm of 30 police officers came surrounding him when his daughter came to meet him with court orders that allowed her to do so. The women police manhandled her and tried to physically restrain her from meeting her father.

“He has now been moved back to jail against the advice of doctors. Is this how former presidents with no convictions are treated in Madina’s riyasat that the prime minister wants to build,” she asked.

Senator Rehman said: “This government has been pointing towards the Indian state’s insensitivity towards the people of Kashmir but at home it feels so threatened by the opposition that it will form chains just to prevent a daughter from meeting her ailing father. Why are the representatives of the people being treated like terrorists?”

Published in Dawn, September 5th, 2019