LAHORE: Former president and PPP co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari said on Monday that politics required patience as it was like a Test match and not a one-day or T20 game.

Using the cricket jargon apparently to comment on Pakistan Tehreeki-i-Insaf chief Imran Khan’s style of politics, Mr Zardari said: “Let the ball wear out more and more and then we will enter the field. If a fast bowler does not get a wicket, he gets frustrated. We have patience. We should concentrate on our party matters and reconnect with the people.”

Addressing an event held by the PPP social services wing at the Bilawal House here, he said those who used to criticise blockade of roads by other parties now themselves planned to do so.

Mr Zardari said that PPP had served people during five-year tenure of its last government, but “like always” the never ending propaganda against it persisted.

He said Peoples Party had lost last year’s elections because of a “conspiracy”. He said the PPP was in majority in the Senate till March and it would give a tough time to the government on real issues.

Mr Zardari said the country was facing a complicated situation in which both the murderers and the victims were raising the same religious slogans and reciting the same Kalma.

“For five consecutive years I repeated in my every address to the UN that we are losing this war. We need to act prudently in the current political situation,” he recalled.

The PPP co-chairman said that petroleum prices were being reduced because of international political position of various stakeholders. “International players want to make one country economically strong and another weak. They play their games all the time. Pakistan has suffered a lot because of these games. Osama bin Laden is gone but Pakistan has suffered,” he said.

Mr Zardari said terrorism could be fought with will and courage but there was a need to analyse everything very carefully.

He said as military dictator Gen Ziaul Haq had failed to eliminate the ideology of Bhutto, similarly the right wing forces would never be able to eliminate the mission of the late Benazir Bhutto. “We are sons of the soil and are indebted to our soil and will fight for it and live and die for our country.”

He said the PPP had set an example for other parties by setting up its social services wing. “If other parties establish social services wings the future of orphan children in Pakistan will be much safer,” he said.

Published in Dawn, December 2nd, 2014