LAHORE, Nov 15: The Alliance for Restoration of Democracy has convened a national consultative meeting in Karachi on Nov 21.

This was announced by ARD Secretary-General Qazi Abdul Qadeer Khamosh at the Lahore Press Club on Thursday.

Bilawal House would be the venue for the meeting, he said, adding that alliance chairperson Benazir Bhutto had assigned its president, Makhdoom Amin Fahim, the task of making contacts with all the parties.

Besides ARD constituents, he said, all the like-minded parties and groups would be invited to the meeting.

ARD Deputy Information Secretary Munir Ahmad Khan on the occasion released a ‘fact sheet’ on the five-year performance of the government. He wondered that the cabinet and the National Assembly, which came into being under the Constitution, passed a resolution for approving the suspension of the same most basic law.

For the first time in the national history, he said, judges of superior courts were arrested while Gen Musharraf backed out of his promise of hanging up his uniform. He said at least Rs79 billion loans were written off by the government, while unemployment, poverty and price-hike had shot up by 625 per cent, 425 per cent and 750 per cent, respectively, since October 2002.

Financial scams worth billions of rupees in the privatisation of Steels Mills, Habib Bank and PTCL surfaced, and the land mafia grabbed precious property in all the major urban centres, he added.

At least 5,100 people committed suicide due to abject poverty during the same period while 5,488 were killed in various bomb blasts and suicide attacks, says the fact sheet.

The president violated the Constitution by not addressing joint sittings of parliament at the start of each parliamentary year as was required under Article 56(3), it adds.

Former Balochistan governor Nawaz Akbar Bugti was killed along with scores of sympathisers in an army operation, Sharif brothers were deported unconstitutionally and in blatant violation of the Supreme Court orders, while PPP Chairperson Benazir Bhutto was house-arrested twice after she landed here on Oct 18, the report regrets. —Amjad Mahmood