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| June 22, 2005 | Wednesday | Jumadi-ul-Awwal 14, 1426 |
Benazir warns rulers against rigging elections
ISLAMABAD, June 21: Former prime minister and Chairperson Pakistan People’s Party Benazir Bhutto on Tuesday warned the regime against rigging the future elections again as it had done in 2002. She said elections in 2002 were held just one year after 9/11 but now those imperatives had begun to face.
According to the PPP media cell, she said this in her message read out on the eve of functions held throughout the country to mark her 52nd birthday.
Ms Bhutto said the days of dictatorship had been numbered. “Dictatorship is running out of steam. It has failed to live up to the promises made. It has failed to deliver to the people.”
The former prime minister stressed building a modern state on the foundations of an Islamic, federal, democratic, egalitarian and unanimous constitution which the party gave to the country.
“We need to revert to the Constitution of 1973 that called subversion of the Constitution through military intervention an act of treason.”
She said in times of great tensions between the federating units and the federation and of distrust between the state and citizens, we need to revert to our Constitution that has guaranteed full autonomy to the provinces and protected the human rights of every citizen by introducing habeas corpus for the first time in the history of Pakistan.
“Today, more than ever before, we need to rebuild the foundations of education and industrialisation in the country. Our labour and working class cry out for the modernisation of labour laws to give them dignity and incentives to contribute to the welfare of the country. “Small farmers, peasants and ordinary citizens need to be liberated from repression and cruelty and all citizens must feel that they are born equal and will live together only with equal rights,” she said. Ms Bhutto also reviewed the developments that took place as another year of her life passed into history.
“Personally, my family and I have suffered the rigours of exile and the pains of having been separated from my people at the hands of a vengeful junta bent upon victimisation to consolidate dictatorship and to exploit the people, she said.
However, these personal difficulties are insignificant when I think about the pain, the sufferings and the humiliation heaped on the teeming million of my countrymen who have been deprived of their most basic right to choose their own government.”
She said the world saw how the war against terror was abused, as noted by the Amnesty International, against political opponents of the regime for PPP workers were wrongfully charged with terrorism for receiving Mr Zardari.
We saw gender harassment with its ugly face as women opponents were roughly beaten up by male police offending the Islamic values as well as the traditions of the Indus Valley civilisation.
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