9 April 2005	Saturday	29 Safar 1426

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LAHORE, April 8: Asif Ali Zardari says the PPP and the ‘establishment’ have different views about the definition of democracy, and this is the major obstacle to progress in the contacts between the two sides.

“They have their own view about democracy, and we define it in our own way,” he said while talking to Dawn on the phone from Dubai on Thursday.

He called the contacts as ‘confidence-building measures’ between civil society and the establishment.

Set to return home on April 16 despite his father’s advice to the contrary, Mr Zardari reiterated his demand for fresh elections during the current year under an interim government comprising non-political and neutral people like HRCP Chairperson Asma Jehangir and social worker Abdus Sattar Edhi. He said the country needed free and fair elections and to restore the sanctity of the ballot, power should be transferred to the HRCP chief.

Asked how fresh elections would help solve the country’s problems when several such exercises conducted in the past after prematurely dismissing the PPP and PML-N governments had failed to yield positive results, Mr Zardari said elections held in the past were rigged. He said rigged elections would not be in the country’s interest.

He said three prime ministers had failed in two years, and there was ‘insurgency’ in two provinces. Travel by night in Sindh had become impossible, and Balochistan was alleging that Punjab had invaded it. He said history’s biggest-ever cabinet was unable to maintain a quorum in the National Assembly, and about 50 per cent people were living below the poverty line. The MMA also posed a serious challenge to the government. In such a situation, he said, no democrat would demand anything except restoration of democracy.

“Assuming that the PPP gets a majority in the fresh elections, will it be willing to work with Gen Pervez Musharraf as president,” he was asked.

Mr Zardari said: “Is Gen Musharraf a democratically-elected president? Is a general in uniform a democrat? I am talking of the Constitution. I can’t budge on the position of my party.”

He said the elected parliament would have to take various decisions keeping in mind the requirements of the situation. He also underlined the need for a dialogue between all democratic forces. He said all extremist forces would be the PPP’s rival in the elections.

Asked if the MMA was an extremist force, he said it was a grouping of religious parties which talked against the PPP’s manifesto.

When asked if it was feasible to hold local and general elections during the same year, the PPP leader said: “Let the interim government decide the niceties.”

Mr Zardari reiterated he would make Punjab the centre of his political activities following his return to Lahore, where he is due on April 16.