KARACHI, May 4: Pakistan People’s Party leader Asif Ali Zardari on Wednesday castigated the regime for price-hike, rising unemployment and deteriorating law and order and attacking and brutalizing the press.

Addressing a news conference at a restaurant near Bilawal House, he offered ‘safe passage’ to General Musharraf if the general was prepared to quit and make way for transfer of powers to public representatives.

When asked about the dialogue between the PPP and the Establishment, Mr Zardari maintained that engaging in the dialogue did not mean ‘compromising on people’s democratic rights’. By the term ‘Establishment’, I don’t mean the military cluster alone, but it also includes other segments of society, such as retired civil and military bureaucrats, businessmen, lawyers, etc.”

Mr Zardari criticized government’s economic policies due to which it had become impossible for people to eke out their livings; and many of them were being forced to commit suicide or slaughter their kith and kin.

He said that Pakistan’s economy was being made ‘India-dependent’ because even potato was now being imported from that country. This is also indicative of the fact that the government’s agricultural policy had failed to optimise domestic production.

Mr Zardari also lambasted the government for the rising graph of unemployment and deteriorating law and order, saying that in two of the four provinces, armed forces were engaged in operations. This was indicative of the deteriorating law and order amid a situation where people were being pushed to the wall. “We deserve, and we demand, democracy,” Mr Zardari emphatically stated.

At the very outset, the PPP leader condemned the baton-charge and arrest of journalists in Islamabad and Lahore, and termed the action as ‘last nail in the coffin of the undemocratic regime.’

In a sharp reaction to the police action against journalists in Lahore and outside the Parliament House in Islamabad, Mr Zardari declared: “We will make sure that no authoritarian ruler could ever resort to repeat it and disenfranchise people by gagging the press.”

He described the strong arm tactics against journalists across the country as ‘a conspiracy against democracy’ which was reflective of the regime’s intention of not allowing democratic dispensation to take roots.

While the entire world is observing Press Freedom Day, the undemocratic regime in Pakistan is mounting a physical attack on the press, sending journalists behind the bars, and applying baton charge on hundreds of journalists. He said that freedom of press was essential for democracy, and expressed solidarity with media in its struggle for freedom and democracy.

Accusing the regime of planning massive rigging, he said the PPP would still contest the upcoming local bodies elections. He, however, maintained, that free, fair and transparent general elections were essential for taking the country out of the present crises.

He pointed out that in Punjab, the PPP-backed candidates had done well in 26 out of the 34 districts though due to, what he claimed, ‘manipulation’, the party could not get its nazims elected at many places.

He advised PPP supporters not get confused or misled by vested interests.

He told another questioner that whatever misunderstanding recently cropped up within the ARD leadership had been removed, although the Establishment had tried its best to exploit the situation to its own advantage.