29 November 2004	Monday	16 Shawwal 1425

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HYDERABAD, Nov 28: Pakistan People's Party-SB chairperson Ghinwa Bhutto has stressed the need for changing the system by empowering people.

Speaking at an Eid Millan party hosted by the PPP-SB's local chapter for journalists at the press club here on Saturday, she said under the new local bodies system, power had not been devolved as was being propagated.

Ms Bhutto said the true devolution of power lay in empowering the masses to resolve their own problems at the local level. She said the present local governments neither enjoyed judicial nor administrative powers. She said even an FIR could not be registered without permission of feudal lords and the high echelon of the police department.

She said the local bodies must be given full financial powers, including powers of taxation and carrying out development programmes independently. The PPP-SB chairperson said her party would contest the local bodies' elections on the issue of empowerment of the masses.

She regretted that elections in Pakistan were held on the basis of personalities and not on the basis of programmes. She said it was beyond the capacity of individuals to provide jobs, control price-hike, maintain law and order and dispense justice. She stressed the need for formulating programmes for welfare of people and reiterated that people should vote for programmes and not for individuals.

About the release of Asif Ali Zardari, she unequivocally stated that her party did not believed in revenge and added that Mr Zardari was arrested by the government not only in the Mir Murtaza Bhutto case but numerous cases were also pending against him.

She said notwithstanding statements of the Sindh chief minister, she would like to make it clear that she was the head of a party which did not believe in vengeance. She said her party had full faith in courts and it wanted justice for all the people and for all the time.

She said the murder case of Murtaza Bhutto had been pending in the court for many years. It was the duty of the government and judiciary to dispense justice but, she regretted, they had failed in this regard.

She said people wanted to know the whole truth about the murder of Murtaza Bhutto. Ms Bhutto was highly critical of the Karachi Development Authority action to displace people from their homes on the pretext of removing encroachments.