HYDERABAD, Feb 1: The president of Tehrik-i-Istiqlal (TI), Rehmat Khan Verdag, has said that since the Supreme Court has authorised Gen Pervez Musharraf to amend the Constitution, he should take advantage of this and restore the powers of the president to dissolve the government without dissolving parliament.

He was speaking at a news conference at the residence of the provincial vice president of the party, Aftab Ahmed Paracha, here on Friday.

He said that in case of the dissolution of the government parliament should elect a new prime minister in which the dismissed prime minister should be debarred from contesting the election of the said post.

He demanded that the next general elections should be held on the basis of proportionate representation.

He pointed out that right from 1985 to 1997 the government and parliament were dissolved on five occasions and added that the average tenure of parliament came to only two-and-a-half years.

Under the circumstance, he said, that the tenure of parliament should be reduced to three years.

He further said that seats should be reserved for the people from all schools of thought to resolve the contentious issues. He reiterated that the seats of provincial and national assemblies and the senate should be doubled because the population of the country had also doubled during the last 29 years.

He further proposed that the prime minister in the next general elections should be elected directly by the people to check horse-trading in the assembly.

He pointed out that under the new local government system, only Karachi and Lahore had been given the status of city governments and demanded that all the cities with a population of over 1.5 million should be given the same status to resolve the problems of the people.

He strongly opposed the condition of being a graduate for the candidate to qualify for election and said that where the literacy rate was only 20 per cent, this condition was simply incomprehensible.

He also demanded that along with the reintroduction of joint electorate system, the minority quota should be restored.

The general secretary of the party, Ahmed Dara, provincial president Aftab Parach and Siraj Qureshi were also present in the press conference.