HYDERABAD, June 5: People’s Party Parlimentarians leader Sardar Assef Ahmed Ali has described Gen Pervez Musharraf as a desperate man who he said is quite capable of taking extra-constitutional steps to perpetuate himself in power and may ask the superior court judges to take a new oath under the PCO before the Supreme Court adjudicates on petitions against government actions.

Mr Assef told a news conference at the press club on Tuesday that Gen Musharraf had got bogged down in a quagmire.

He slammed government ban on some private TV channels and said that Gen Musharraf, not Pemra, had imposed the ban after the media exposed him and his ministers during May 12 killings in Karachi. The blood of 44 innocent people was shed under the patronage of the state, he charged.

Gen Musharraf had himself boasted about show of power in Karachi and had publicly stated that PML and MQM were his allies. People were asking whether Gen Musharraf was the chief of a political party or Pakistan army, he said.

Mr Assef said that Gen Musharraf had even refused to order a judicial inquiry into the May 12 killings and recalled that the government had also pulled the rug over inquiry into the Kargil fiasco which claimed the lives of 3,500 jawans while India held an inquiry into the Kargil issue and rolled many heads. The government had also avoided conducting an inquiry into the murder of Nawab Akbar Bugti, he said.

He said that judging from the rousing receptions the CJP was receiving in different cities of the country, it was evident that the judiciary would at last achieve its independence. For the first time in the history of Punjab millions of people lined up along the roads on May 5 when the CJP visited Lahore and the judge was made to cover 300kms in 24 hours.

The former foreign minister said that the areas which the CJP had visited so far were the heartlands of army. The people who turned up to welcome the judge were not hired heads like those who attended public meeting in Islamabad in return for Rs350 each, he said.

He said that the CJP had become a symbol of people’s emancipation, their rights especially fundamental human rights and the freedom of press. The general had failed to realise that a mental revolution had taken place among people, which he termed ‘‘Chambeli Revolution’’ (peaceful).

Neither MQM nor Washington or London could stem the advance of this peaceful democratic revolution, he said and ridiculed Gen Musharraf’s assertion that it was he who had granted freedom to the press.

He said that the government had already resorted to repressive measures against the movement with many activists of PPP arrested in different districts of the Punjab.