GUJRAT: Pakistan People’s Party Information Secretary Qamar Zaman Kaira has said Asif Ali Zardari has defused the pressure on the PML-N government regarding the trial of former dictator Pervez Musharraf by appearing before the accountability court.

“The government was being threatened by certain quarters to not start the trial of Musharraf,” he told reporters at the Gujrat Press Club here on Tuesday. PPP’s Asghar Passowal and others were also present.

“Now people raise a question if a former civilian president can appear before a court despite all security threats, why a former military ruler cannot appear before the court in connection with his trial,” said Mr Kaira.

He said the army and the judiciary should work within their constitutional domains and the impression that the former was not subservient to the government must be done away with. “Devising policies and running the government affairs is the sole responsibility of parliament and elected representatives,” he said.

Also, he said, the political parties must serve the nation the way they were supposed to. He said the PPP was a critic of the PML-N government but at the same time his party was also a supporter of the government since an agreement had been reached between them in the charter of democracy to not become “a tool of any hidden force for destabilising each other’s government”.

The Nawaz government, he said, could not alone cope with the national challenges like terrorism, economy, energy, employment and literacy issues and every segment of society and all institutions must support it.

He said people had started taunting the PPP government that the constitutional amendments did not

provide food and other necessities of life to a common man but he always advocated that there was great link between the constitutional reforms and the masses’ lives. — Correspondent