April 8, 2002	Monday	Muharram 24, 1423

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ISLAMABAD, April 7: Press Secretary to President Musharraf, Major-General Rashid Qureshi on Sunday said that the president and his government had not launched a war against democracy but against exploitation, corruption, loot and plunder of national wealth that Benazir Bhutto had been doing.

He was commenting on a statement that the absconding PPP leader had made, wherein she had said that the president had launched a war on democracy.

He reminded Benazir Bhutto of the provision for a referendum present in the Seventh Amendment which was brought about in 1973 Constitution by the parliament led by her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, during the 1977 PNA agitation against him.

Ms Bhutto in her statement published on Sunday claimed that referendum amounted to declaration of war on democracy.

Gen Qureshi reminded her that an elected sitting prime minister of the day, who was also her father, introduced the amendment in the Constitution and thought it wise and proper to go for a referendum to seek people’s mandate to remain in power or not; and particularly so, in the presence of a parliament.

Holding of a referendum, he said, is nothing new in Pakistan as well as in established democracies outside.

He said, President Pervez Musharraf is not hiding under any extra-constitutional methods or PCO, but is seeking the people’s mandate as per established democratic norms and traditions, particularly when it is very much provided for in the 1973 Constitution.—APP