November 14, 2002	Thursday	Ramazan 8, 1423

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SAN FRANCISCO, Nov 13: The Pakistan American Democratic Forum (PADF), a leading organization of Pakistani Americans, has expressed concern that the current manoeuvrings by the military government are fast eroding its scanty legitimacy in the West and may lead to the demise of self-proclaimed Musharraf-Naqvi agenda for reform.

In a strongly worded statement on the current political stalemate, the PADF has expressed its further disappointment with military government’s interference with the formation of a parliamentary coalition and legal structuring of the incoming parliament.

Dr Agha Saeed, Chairman PADF, said that at a time when the whole world was looking for a Muslim country, Pakistan in particular, to put in place a working democracy and to empower itself through the creative participation of the broadest masses of people, the Musharraf government seems adamant at disrupting the process of transition to democracy.

He said that the Musharraf government’s image in the West was fast changing into that of a failing dictatorship seeking to perpetuate itself by violating and contradicting every principle that it had initially invoked to anchor and legitimate its takeover.

The PADF statement said that the legal niceties aside, Law Minister Dr Khalid Ranjha’s contradictory statements about the constitutional provisions dealing with floor-crossing and defection reveal systematic attempts at perpetuation of the military rule through the king’s party.

These flip-flops will have a seriously negative effect at home and abroad. Such unprincipled, albeit technically defensible, manoeuvres will only deepen the sense of cynicism and hopelessness, the statement added.

“Once again we Pakistani Americans call on the military government to convene the National Assembly immediately, not to insist like Gen Yahya Khan that all issues must be settled outside parliament and before parliament is convened, desist from interfering with the formation of a parliamentary coalition and restore the 1973 Constitution with all purported amendments subject to approval by the incoming parliament,” the PADF statement concluded.