LAHORE, Aug 25: Former Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Punjab president Qasim Zia told reporters on Monday his party had not yet decided whether to remove the Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) from power in the Punjab.

“The PPP does not take decisions in haste or in anger,” Mr Zia said, adding that instead the fate of the Punjab Assembly would rest with the party’s Central Executive Committee.

He said the PPP had “the democratic right” to ask for votes from all members of the national and provincial assemblies, including those of the Pakistan Muslim League-Q (PML-Q) for its presidential candidate Asif Ali Zardari.

In a sign of the growing gulf between the PPP and former coalition partners the PML-N, Zia said PPP Co-Chairman Zardari had suffered eight years in jail for democracy, while the PML-N had forwarded the name of a candidate whose involvement in deposing of former chief justice Sajjad Ali Shah in 1998 was still fresh in public memory.

Asked how PPP workers would feel about being required to solicit support from a party that Mr Zardari had earlier branded the “Qatil league” (killer league) and had blamed for his wife’s death, Zia responded: “We have gotten rid of the dictator who put the PPP through all this. We have the right to ask for votes from any member of the assembly.”Mr Zia also issued a vaguely worded threat to Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaaf Chairman Imran Khan, who had earlier in the day called Zardari’s integrity into question. Mr Zia said: “I want to give him this warning: if he ever uses such language again…then the workers of the PPP know how to stop him.”

Taseer: Governor Salman Taseer has said the election of PPP Co-chairperson Asif Zardari as president of Pakistan is in national interest.

Addressing PPP workers from Attock during an open house at the Governor’s House here on Monday, he said the party had the right to the office of the president by virtue of being the largest party in the country with representation in all the provinces. He said he wished Zardari to be elected president unanimously.