LAHORE, Jan 15: Former ambassador and minister Abida Husain says Ms Benazir Bhutto is the only ray of hope for the restoration of democracy and constitutional rule in the country.

She was talking to reporters at her residence after a meeting with former Punjab PPP president Qasim Zia on Monday.

The two leaders exchanged views about the political situation in the country, in Punjab in particular.

Abida Husain and her husband Fakhr Imam are scheduled to go to Dubai on Tuesday to meet Ms Bhutto. The couple joined the PPP a few months ago.

Abida had first joined the PPP at the invitation of the late Zulfikar Bhutto when she was 25.

However, she was ‘muscled out’ by her male relatives in the party only six years later. After quitting the PPP, she joined the (defunct) National Democratic Party and yet later the PML-N and the PML-Q.

“I am back into my mother party”, she said of her decision to rejoin the PPP.

She said she was impressed by the leadership qualities of Ms Bhutto. She praised the strategy Ms Bhutto was following for the restoration of democracy.

She said the PPP was the most popular party and it alone could solve the problems of the people.

Answering a question about her experience of working with both the factions of the PML, Abida Husain said: “I am an astronaut in search of moon. But I realised that both the PML factions were full of craters”.

She said now she would pull the nuggets out of the PML and leave “rubbish” behind.

She said politics was not the field for the armed forces and thus they should go back to the barracks.