Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was yesterday given a reprieve when the Pakistani Supreme Court ordered he be investigated for corruption, but ruled there was not yet sufficient evidence to oust him from power.
Sharif and his children are accused of graft in a case which has captivated Pakistan and threatened to topple the prime minister after the “Panama Papers” leak last year linked the family to offshore businesses.
The Supreme Court issued a split ruling calling for a joint investigation team of anti-corruption officials along with the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence and Military Intelligence to probe the claims and issue a report within 60 days.
Photo: Reuters
“A thorough investigation is required,” Justice Asif Saeed Khosa told the court, presenting the 540-page written judgement which opens with the epigraph that launches Mario Puzo’s 1969 novel The Godfather: “Behind every great fortune there is a crime.”
Two of the five judges went further than the ruling, branding Sharif “dishonest” and saying he should be disqualified, but they were outnumbered.
The court has disqualified leaders before, holding then-Pakistani prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani in contempt in 2012 for refusing to reopen corruption investigations into then-Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari, resulting in his disqualification.
Government supporters could be seen celebrating the judgement outside the court in Islamabad, where about 1,500 police commandos and riot forces had been deployed ahead of the highly anticipated decision.
“We will cooperate fully with the investigation and seek to clear whatever doubts are left,” Pakistani Minister of Defense Khawaja Asif said.
Pakistani cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan, whose Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf party has spearheaded the push against Sharif, called on the prime minister to resign until the investigation is completed.
“Whatever explanations they gave inside the Supreme Court about their source of income have been exposed as lies,” Khan told reporters in the wake of the judgement.
The continuing controversy could trouble Sharif’s governing party ahead of general elections that must be held by the end of next year, and as security and the economy improve in the militancy-plagued nation.
AGING: As of last month, people aged 65 or older accounted for 20.06 percent of the total population and the number of couples who got married fell by 18,685 from 2024 Taiwan has surpassed South Korea as the country least willing to have children, with an annual crude birthrate of 4.62 per 1,000 people, Ministry of the Interior data showed yesterday. The nation was previously ranked the second-lowest country in terms of total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime. However, South Korea’s fertility rate began to recover from 2023, with total fertility rate rising from 0.72 and estimated to reach 0.82 to 0.85 by last year, and the crude birthrate projected at 6.7 per 1,000 people. Japan’s crude birthrate was projected to fall below six,
US President Donald Trump in an interview with the New York Times published on Thursday said that “it’s up to” Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be “very unhappy” with a change in the “status quo.” “He [Xi] considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing, but I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that. I hope he doesn’t do that,” Trump said. Trump made the comments in the context
SELF-DEFENSE: Tokyo has accelerated its spending goal and its defense minister said the nation needs to discuss whether it should develop nuclear-powered submarines China is ramping up objections to what it sees as Japan’s desire to acquire nuclear weapons, despite Tokyo’s longstanding renunciation of such arms, deepening another fissure in the two neighbors’ increasingly tense ties. In what appears to be a concerted effort, China’s foreign and defense ministries issued statements on Thursday condemning alleged remilitarism efforts by Tokyo. The remarks came as two of the country’s top think tanks jointly issued a 29-page report framing actions by “right-wing forces” in Japan as posing a “serious threat” to world peace. While that report did not define “right-wing forces,” the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was
PREPAREDNESS: Given the difficulty of importing ammunition during wartime, the Ministry of National Defense said it would prioritize ‘coproduction’ partnerships A newly formed unit of the Marine Corps tasked with land-based security operations has recently replaced its aging, domestically produced rifles with more advanced, US-made M4A1 rifles, a source said yesterday. The unnamed source familiar with the matter said the First Security Battalion of the Marine Corps’ Air Defense and Base Guard Group has replaced its older T65K2 rifles, which have been in service since the late 1980s, with the newly received M4A1s. The source did not say exactly when the upgrade took place or how many M4A1s were issued to the battalion. The confirmation came after Chinese-language media reported
RSS