Pakistan drugs force issues warrant for man who was favourite to be PM
Country thrown into more chaos as Makhdoom Shahabuddin accused over links with illegal drugs trade while health minister
Makhdoom Shahabuddin, who was favourite to become PM in Pakistan, has had a warrant issued against him for supplying drugs. Photograph: Aamir Qureshi/AFP
A military backed court in Pakistan has torpedoed efforts by the embattled ruling party to find a new prime minister by ordering the arrest on of the leading candidate just hours after he had been nominated.
Makhdoom Shahabuddin was accused by the court of using his former position as health minister two years ago to allow huge quantities of chemicals to be diverted to producers of illegal methamphetamine.
On the eve of a parliamentary vote on a new prime minister the ruling Pakistan People's Party (PPP) promptly dropped their candidate.
Even by Pakistan's high standards of political intrigue Shahabuddin's short-lived nomination came as a surprise and heightened concerns that a government at loggerheads with powerful state institutions, including an increasingly assertive judiciary and a military that has long disliked PPP rule, will struggle to remain in power much longer.
The latest political crisis was triggered on Tuesday when the supreme court ordered the sacking of the prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, following months of legal skirmishing over his refusal to reopen a dormant money laundering investigation into President Asif Ali Zardari.
But barely six hours after Shahabuddin, a feudal landlord and close ally of Zardari, was nominated to replace him, a magistrate from the Anti Narcotics Force issued its arrest warrant accusing him of approving the manufacture of an enormous quantity of ephedrine by two pharmaceutical companies during his time as health minister.
Drug control officials say the 2,500kg allotted to the two companies involved was far in excess of that required for the substance's legal use for making cold medicines.
The companies are said to have passed the ephedrine on to producers of meth, a highly addictive drug on the rise in South Asia.....
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6/21/2012
~Freedom Project~ Pakistan drugs force issues warrant for man who was favourite to be PM | The Galactic Free Press
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