KARACHI, Sept 28: The Pakistan People’s Party has described as deliberate distortions of history General Pervez Musharraf’s remarks about late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in his memoirs — In the Line of Fire.

In a statement issued here on Thursday, leader of opposition in the Senate Mian Raza Rabbani said that the book exposed a bias because “it is a historical fact that since the inception of Pakistan, the civil-military bureaucracy refused to accept the majority of East Pakistan, which is evident from the removal of Hussain Sohrawardy, language riots and deliberate marginalisation of Bengalis in civil services and armed forces.”

Doubting what he termed General Musharraf’s self-proclaimed democratic credentials, Mr Rabbani said: “It is strange that a person, who draws his legitimacy from a fraudulent referendum, should question the greatest practical revolutionary after Chairman Mao (Tse Tung).”

He said that Mr Bhutto had led a people’s movement against the dictatorship of Ayub Khan and had waged a struggle for economic emancipation of Pakistan’s working classes from the hands of feudals and capitalists.

In fact, he had led a ‘peaceful working class revolution’ against status quo and was not a lackey of international imperialists, nor had he bartered the country’s political and economic sovereignty or betrayed the Ummah.

He added that it was the civil-military bureaucracy’s policies that had denied East Pakistan its share in governance and economic prosperity.

This was heightened when the character of the state, as envisaged by the Quaid, was changed by them from a welfare state to a national security state.

The Humoodur Rehman Commission Report clearly stated the historical circumstances at the time which resulted in the creation of Bangladesh, Mr Rabbani added.