February 14, 2008	Thursday	Safar 06, 1429

LAHORE, Feb 13: President Pervez Musharraf will have no problem in working with the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) or any other party which wins the February 18 general election, his spokesman says.

“Any party that the people vote in is acceptable to the president,” Maj-Gen (retd) Rashid Qureshi told Dawn on Wednesday.

Asked if the president wanted the PPP and the PML-Q to form a coalition, the spokesman said that that decision would have to be taken by the parties concerned and not the president. He added that it was for the parties to decide on the basis of election results if they wanted to form a multi-party government.

He said the prime minister, to be nominated by the party winning the majority seats, would have a free hand in forming the cabinet. “The president will play his own role,” the spokesman said, adding that President Musharraf would not go beyond the limits set by the Constitution.

PPP co-chairman Asif Zardari said on Tuesday that his party would decide on the issue of working with President Musharraf after elections. Mr Qureshi claimed that the coming elections would be ‘impartial and most transparent in the country’s history’ and local and international observers would be free to monitor them. He said the Election Commission should take steps if political parties had any positive suggestions.

He termed the IRI survey report on President Musharraf’s popularity as “biased and motivated”, and aimed at tarnishing the image of the president and the country at a time when the general elections were due in a few days. “These reports are aimed to portray Pakistan as an unstable and weak state”.

He said the fact that about eight such surveys had been conducted over the past four months reinforced suspicions that there were some ulterior motives behind the exercise. He said the president was not contesting the election and, therefore, the question of his popularity at this stage was irrelevant.

The president, the spokesman said, had been duly elected for five years and his successor would be chosen after the end of his term.

He said there was no justification in comparing the president with political parties. He also disagreed with the methods adopted by various institutions for carrying out popularity surveys.

“Some Pakistanis are also consciously or unconsciously playing into the hands of those who do not want to see Pakistan as a stable, democratic, progressive and democratic country,” he said.