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| India-Pakistan |
| PPP, MMA slam PM's 'emergency' statement |
| 2007-05-08 |
| Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Federal Council secretary general Khalid Ahmad Kharal has condemned Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz’s statement in which Aziz has ‘threatened’ to impose emergency in the country. “His unwise statement has directly affected Pakistan’s stock market, which has declined by 440 points in one day,” he said, adding that the government can now neither invoke emergency nor any other legal mechanism to stop the people who have come on the roads against the regime. The people of Pakistan will not allow Aziz to play with their fundamental rights and the courts of law will ensure that the people’s fundamental rights are not violated in any form, said Kharal. Aziz should go back to America and resume his profession as a banker, Kharal added. Former federal minister Chaudhry Ahmad Mukhtar said the only honorable exit for Aziz and President Pervez Muharraf lay in immediately withdrawing the reference against Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, installing a caretaker government, handing over the presidential office to the Senate chairman and allowing the caretaker government to hold fair elections in the country. Mukhtar said Benazir Bhutto, Nawaz Sharif and other exiled leaders should be free to return and participate in such an election. He said the people’s warm reception for the CJP has proven that the ruling party is flawed. He added that this is why Aziz raised the issue of imposition of emergency in Pakistan. PPP Punjab President Shah Mehmood Qureshi said the country is already undergoing a constitutional crisis with opposition parties and lawyers protesting to restore democracy and the supremacy of the constitution. While addressing a press conference, he said a statement concerning the imposition of emergency could only serve to fuel further anarchy in the country. He said there was no need of imposition of emergency and President Musharraf should himself condemn Aziz’s irresponsible statement. Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal deputy secretary general Liaqat Baloch said the rulers, instead of thinking about imposing emergency, should direct the president to resign from his dual offices and release control to an interim government till a new democratic government could be elected. Hailing the Supreme Court larger bench’s decision of issuing a stay order for suspending the Supreme Judicial Council’s proceedings, he said the people would hear historical decisions from the courts in the coming days. Baloch said the people of Punjab have shown that they are against one-man rule and now Musharraf should resign from his post to redress his wrongs against the nation. Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf Chairman Imran Khan, Punjab President Ehsan Rasheed and Secretary Information Umer Sarfraz Cheema, while condemning the prime minister’s statement, said the country’s rulers were making mistake after mistake. |
| Posted by:Fred |