PESHAWAR, Nov 4: Opposition parties on Sunday criticised the government for what they called the “murder of the Constitution and humiliation of the judiciary”.

They called for restoration of the Constitution and rescinding of the emergency order.

Talking to Dawn, Pakistan People’s Party provincial general secretary Najmuddin Khan said it was a martial law which had deprived the people of their basic rights.

He said the government had put a virtual ban on the media.

He said the PPP would hold its public meeting in Rawalpindi on November 9 and party chairperson Benazir Bhutto would address it.

Awami National Party additional secretary-general Haji Mohammad Adeel said Gen Pervez Musharraf had targeted the judiciary and the media to win political support of the western countries and opportunist gangs in the country.

He said that in 1999 he (Musharraf) issued a charge sheet against the elected government of Mian Nawaz Sharif and dismissed it at gunpoint.

This time, he said, instead of pointing finger on his corrupt allies, he accused the judiciary and the media for creating hurdles in the way of government.

He said that Gen Musharraf’s government was responsible for the Lal Masjid crisis, killing and kidnapping in Waziristan, crash of stock exchange and the barbarity in Swat.

He said that only supporters of Gen Musharraf had endorsed the reopening of Lal Masjid.

He said the government wanted the electronic media (non-state TV channels) to disseminate the news about the rising, but a stage-managed, violence across the world so that he could use it being a pretext for taking media off air and dismissing the superior judges. He said the government had gone mad on the issue of “missing persons”.

He said the Supreme Court had not asked the government to release “missing persons”, instead it had asked the government to furnish details about them.

The NWFP chapter of the National Party also condemned the declaration of state of emergency in the country and called upon patriotic and democratic forces to launch a united struggle against the fresh martial law in the country.

In a joint statement, National Party president Mukhtar Bacha said the armed forces had been clinging to the political power for 50 years and they were not ready to accept the people’s sovereignty in Pakistan.

He said that the military rulers had kept making-and-breaking of anti-people alliances to manoeuvre the defeat and failure of civilian governments to advance their interests.

He said the people had lauded the courage of judges who had refused to take fresh oath under the provisional constitution order (PCO) and preferred to go home.

He said the military rulers had first created the reasons, in the form of lawlessness, and then removed independent and courageous judges from the Supreme Court.

According to Dawn correspondent in Noshera, the provincial government had deployed contingents of police at all the NWFP entry points to arrest activists and leaders of the Jamaat-i-Islami, who had gone to attend grand gathering of JI members.