05 January 2004	Monday	12 Ziqa'ad 1424

KARACHI, Jan 4: The 76th birth anniversary of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, founding chairman of the Pakistan People's Party and the first elected prime minister of the country, will be commemorated on Monday (Jan 5).

A press release issued here on Sunday stated that PPP workers all over the country have chalked out various programmes, including Quran Khwani, Fateha Khwani, meetings and seminars to pay tribute to their leader.

At Bilawal House, residence of PPP chairperson Benazir Bhutto, Quran Khwani will be held at 11.30am and would be followed by free food distribution. PPP's deputy secretary-general Mian Raza Rabbani said that even 25 years after his "murder" - which he attributed to an international conspiracy - at the hands of a dictator, Z.A. Bhutto continues to live in the people's hearts, adding efforts at the state level to eliminate the people's love for him had failed.

Mian Rabbani people all over the Muslim world and not only in Pakistan realized that things would have been different all over the world today if Gen Ziaul Haq and his allies had not eliminated Zulfikar Ali Bhutto on April 4, 1977.

He further said that alliances of the so-called religious parties prior to the 1977 general elections and 11 years after those polls had caused irreparable damage to Pakistan, helping dictators usurp the people's constitutional rights.