ISLAMABAD, Nov 21: The PPP spokesman Farhatullah Babar has said that the election on Thursday of Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali of the PML-Q as the Leader of the House by a single vote majority is made possible by legalizing the floor-crossing and has marked the beginning of new democratic experiment based on moral depravity and legal perversion.

Mr Babar, in a statement issued here on Thursday, said: “Today the generals’ undemocratic agenda to perpetuate themselves in power has won and the democratic forces lost. It is a sad day for all those who uphold the values of freedom, democracy and civil supremacy.”

He said: “Even the bare minimum votes required for election of the leader of the House were made possible only after state agencies were ruthlessly employed to fictionalise mainstream political parties and after horse trading and floor crossing was encouraged by suspending the constitutional provision banning it. It has dawned the era of the new phase billed by the dictators as sustainable democracy.”

“The new ‘sustainable democracy’ rests on the sandy foundations of slender majority of just one vote achieved through manipulation and horse trading,” the statement quoted Mr Babar as saying.

The PPP spokesman said that the process which began with General Musharraf bulldozing into the presidency and went through the sacking of half of the Supreme Court’s judges, the fraudulent referendum, the constitutional amendments, the legal framework order and foisting a uniformed general as president over and above the elected Parliament had culminated into a sham democracy, the statement added.

“The new government when it is formed will be based on deserters and absolutely lack moral authority. It cannot, indeed must not, long. It will not,” he added, the statement quoted him as having said.

The press release quoted the PPP leader as saying: “The newly elected leader of the House and the behind the scene manipulators of the process must pause and ask themselves whether they have in any way advanced or retarded the cause of democracy.”

“The PPP salutes the people of Pakistan who gave the largest number of votes to the party candidates. It also salutes its parliamentarians for their courage to withstand all pressures and inducements in the cause of democracy. Their sacrifice will not go in vain,” the statement said.