NAWABSHAH: Pakistan Peoples PartyParliamentarians president and co-chairman of the party Asif Ali Zardari has said that when he had surrendered his certain presidential powers to the parliament through the 18th constitutional amendment, ‘they’ did not appear to be happy with it.

He did not specifically name the unhappy elements but the general impression was that it may be the security establishment.

“There were no gestures of happiness when ‘they’ congratulated me for handing over the powers to the parliament,” he remarked while addressing party workers from Nawanshah city and taluka chapters at Zardari House here on Saturday.

“[Private TV] anchors were booked and paid to talk against me on channels but I never bothered and always ignored them because they were not of my level,” he said, adding that responding to their propaganda would have helped them earn some worth.

Zardari said that he had been doing and would continue to do whatever was best for the party and the country.

According to a press release issued by the party, he held out the assurance that the PPP would be in the field with its ‘best manifesto’ and it would run the most effective election campaign.

He claimed that it was the PPP that had always successfully dragged the country out of crises.

He said the party believed in people’s mandate. He said genuine public issues were resolved at grass-root level and at the doorsteps of people when true representatives of the masses come into power.

Former Sindh chief minister Syed Murad Ali Shah and members of his team as well as lawmakers and senior activists including Ziaul Hasan Lanjar, Saleem Raza Jalbani, Ghulam Qadir Chandio, Ali Hasan Zardari, Khan Bahadur Bhatti, Syed Atif Hussain Zaidi, Rashid Chandio, Ghulam Shah Leghari, Shafiur Rehman Jadoon and Ashiq Zardari attended the meeting.

Published in Dawn, November 5th, 2023