LAHORE, Oct 13: The Tehrik-i-Istaqlal has urged the opposition to strike a give-and-take deal with the government for the sake of saving parliament.

Speaking at a press conference here on Monday, party president Rehmat Khan Vardag said this was the best solution to the contemporary situation.

Politicians, he argued, had no guns to force the army out of power corridors while economic and social problems had gripped the masses so tightly that they had been left with no will or time to come out on roads for the cause of democracy.

Moreover, Musharraf government’s achievements on economic and foreign policy fronts were great enough to placate the masses, he said.

He claimed that during his recent visits abroad he for the first time found that no overseas Pakistani was against the government back in their homeland.

The expatriates believed that Gen Musharraf had saved the country from isolation in the comity of nations by joining the US-led war on terror.

Hailing the government for adopting the local bodies system presented by the Tehrik in 1979, Vardag, however, criticized it for increasing the term period of local bodies from three to four years.

Demanding a checks and balances system for the district government, he said from union council to district council Nazimeen and up to the prime minister all executives should be elected through a direct vote.

Fearing that opposition to the local bodies by the ruling PML-Q MPs might cause wrapping up of the system, the TI president urged them to demand reformation of the ‘incomplete’ devolution plan to check alleged corruption of Nazimeen instead of opposing it.

He suggested that all senators, MNAs and MPAs of a district must be taken as members of a board under the district Nazim for approving various development schemes.

Condemning the incumbent government for politicizing the district Nazimeen, Vardag said elections to local bodies had been and should be held on a non-party basis to make these tiers of governance free from politics.