LARKANA: Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari arrived in Naudero and Senate Chairman Mian Raza Rabbani reached Garhi Khuda Bukhsh Bhutto on Monday.

The former president would stay in Naudero for a couple of days. He would attend the party’s central executive committee meeting and address a public meeting on Dec 27 in Garhi Khuda Bukhsh, while Mr Rabbani returned to Karachi after a brief visit of Bhutto’s mausoleum, according to sources. Both the leaders had flown in from Karachi on separate helicopters.

Talking to journalists after laying wreath on Bhuttos’ graves and offering Fateha, Mr Rabbani said that Senate elections would be held in accordance with the time frame laid down in the Constitution and reiterated in unequivocal terms that there was no room in the Constitution for postponing either Senate polls or general elections.

If all institutions worked within their constitutional limits, it would ultimately strengthen the parliament and the country and help establish reign of the Constitution, he said.

He said the issue of leakage of in-camera briefing by Chief of Army Staff in Senate had been referred to the house’s business committee.

About his speech at the speakers’ conference in Islamabad, Mr Rabbani said that whatever he had said was nothing new. It had been gleaned from Z.A. Bhutto’s books but political parties tended to distance themselves from individual statements and issue well-calculated statements on foreign policies, he said.

He termed Dec 27 a black day in history and a tragic moment when the former first woman prime minister of Muslim world Benazir Bhutto was assassinated. The incident had left permanent scars on the history of the region, he said.

He said that Benazir Bhutto’s assassination was similar to his father’s judicial murder in that both were eliminated under an international conspiracy.

He accused the elements who did not want to see Pakistan as a democratic and strong country for murdering Benazir Bhutto and urged PPP and its progressive workers to make a pledge to carry forward her mission of strengthening democracy.

Mr Rabbani complained that justice had not been served to Bhutto family in any period. Despite the fact that Gen (retd) Pervez Musharraf had violated the Constitution and cases were registered against him, he was allowed to go.

Earlier, local PPP leaders and Larkana deputy commissioner Kashif Tipu received the Senate chairman on his arrival in Garhi Khuda Bakhsh Bhutto.

Published in Dawn, December 26th, 2017