ISLAMABAD, Nov 18: Central Information Secretary of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) Taj Haider has said the 'king's party' is a "motley crowd of political opportunists".

Responding to an article written by State Minister for Finance Omar Ayub Khan in which he criticized the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy (ARD) and called it a 'motley crowd' of political opportunists, Mr Haider said it was the king's party that was composed of opportunists from the mainstream political parties who were either coerced into submission by the fear of accountability or the lure of ministerial berths and perks.

"The ARD on the other hand comprised those workers of political parties who had refused to be either pressured or bought by the junta," Mr Haider said in a statement issued by the PPP Media Centre here on Thursday.

By calling the ARD parties "political orphans", Mr Haider said, the state minister forgot that it were these very "orphans" who secured the largest number of popular votes in the last elections despite massive rigging and gerrymandering.

The state minister has praised the military dictatorship of Ayub Khan crediting it with economic progress and taken a broadside at the economic policies of the first PPP government.

"The grandson of Pakistan's first military dictator would do well to take a lesson or two in economy," he said, and added, "It was the policies of economic emancipation of the PPP which broke the stranglehold of a few on the country's economic and political power."

Mr Haider said the state minister realized the need for political unity to meet internal and external challenges but failed to admit that the goal of unity would be eluded as long as the regime's sole agenda was marginalization of democratic opposition.

Omar Ayub has asked whether the opposition wanted to reverse the so-called achievements of the regime in the last five years. Mr Haider said the last five years had also witnessed the re- writing of civil-military equation on the terms of the military, the re-writing of the Constitution by an individual, the witch hunting of the opposition and the incapacitation of the judiciary and the parliament.

"Yes, the democratic opposition is committed to reversing these negative trends in the national polity," Mr Haider said.