ISLAMABAD: Former president and Millat Party chief Farooq Ahmed Khan Leghari says both former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif with whom he worked sought to usurp power beyond the constitutional limits and brought about their own downfall by ignoring his counsel against doing so.

In a Dawn Dialogue interview in Islamabad, Mr Leghari said he sacked his own Pakistan People’s Party government of Ms Bhutto in 1996 rather than resign mainly to save the country from a potentially disastrous loan repayment default, but preferred to resign the next year in his row with Mr Sharif to avoid another military intervention.

He rejected the view that he resigned to avoid possible impeachment by parliament, and said Mr Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League could not dare to follow a course contrary to the army’s wishes.

Mr Leghari said he formed his own party rather than join any of the existing ones because their programmes did not coincide with his vision for a new political culture that included empowerment of the common citizen.

He dismissed a suggestion that the Millat Party seemed to be more of a Leghari-family party because of the election of several members of his Leghari tribe or relatives as members of the National Assembly and provincial assemblies.