ISLAMABAD, Aug 21: The Pakistan People’s Party has rejected President Gen Pervez Musharraf’s announcement of constitutional amendments on Wednesday saying no individual has the right to make amendments to the Constitution.

The PPP spokesman, Farhatullah Babar, commenting on the Gen Musharraf’s news conference on the powers of the president and the setting up of the National Security Council, said: “the PPP rejects constitutional amendments.”

No individual has the right to make amendments to the Constitution, he maintained.

“The PPP rejects the National Security Council as a body of checks and balances over the elected government and institutions of democracy... It is a device to re-write the civil-military equation on the military’s terms, which no civil society can accept,” Babar said.

“The PPP believes that the regime, despite its machinations and massive pre-poll rigging, is mortally afraid of an assertive parliament coming into being which will not accept the amendments being imposed unilaterally by the regime. That is why it has resorted to massive emasculation of the Constitution to load the dice against civil society, political parties, and the institutions of democracy.”

He said parliament will be free to change the laws, and reject the constitutional amendments of the regime.

The spokesman said the PPP was part of the ARD, which has declared that no ARD party, after being elected, would ratify the constitutional amendments as it was beyond the competence of a military general to make changes in the Constitution.

The PPP rejects Musharraf’s’ contention that there was no need of approval for the constitutional changes from parliament.