July 16, 2002	Tuesday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 5, 1423

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PESHAWAR, July 15: The Pakistan Awami Party has termed the new constitutional package an assault on the democracy and the supremacy of parliament, and a mockery of the Constitution.

PAP provincial general secretary Syed Shaukat Shah said if the graduates alone were eligible for contesting the elections, then only graduates should be allowed to cast vote. If a voter could not present himself or herself as a candidate, he or she should not cast a vote either, he emphasized.

He claimed that President Pervez Musharraf and his media adviser, Maj-Gen Rashid Qureshi, only held intermediate certificates so both of them were not eligible to hold any public office according to their own definition.

Gen Musharraf, he said, was following in the footsteps of Gen Ayub and Gen Zia, who had tempered with the Constitution to prolong their illegitimate rules.

The PAP, he said, had endorsed the seven-point agenda which Gen Musharraf had announced at the time the takeover and not his plan of sabotaging the Constitution.