LAHORE, April 4: It was imperative to root out dictatorship once and for all if the PPP wanted to materialise the dream of former prime ministers, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and his daughter Benazir Bhutto.

This was a consensus among speakers at a seminar organised by the People’s Lawyers Forum on the death anniversary of PPP founding chairman Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto on Lahore High Court Bar Association premises on Friday.

Speakers warned the government against strengthening Gen Pervez Musharraf (retired) as president at the cost of ushering in democracy. Former LHCBA president Ahmad Awais, PML-N MNA Chaudhry Naseer Ahmad Bhutta, Tanvir Hashmi, Babar Khilji, Malik Saeed Hasan, Chaudhry Nisar Ahmad, Rabya Bajwa and others spoke on the occasion.

The speakers praised Bhutto for what they called his national services in providing the country with the first-ever consensus Constitution. They said Bhutto gave hope to the people when they were reeling under the stress of the division of the country.They said Bhutto initiated the atomic programme and laid a solid foundation of defence of the country, and the best way to honour him was to ensure supremacy of the Constitution and a democratic parliamentary system in letter and spirit.

They said the present government would remain under the shadows of dictatorship if it continued to have a former army chief in power as president. They said Bhutto never showed any weakness against foreign threats and executed programmes that suited best the national interest.

Ahmad Awais said Bhutto had always taken great care in friendship with the Americans because of their fickle nature. Bhutto, he said, knew the United States was an ideological foe of Pakistan and hardly sincere to Islamabad.

He said the Americans advanced their interests in this country through a particular class, which provided the new government with all the more reasons to be wary of them. He said Bhutto put Pakistan into the leadership of the Islamic world by making the Third World states realise their potential. He enabled the Arab world to use oil as a weapon -- a strategy that sent shockwaves throughout the Western world. He said the Islamic world was passing through a rough period and Pakistan needed to show vision, courage and wisdom in line with the thinking of Bhutto.