Hoti warns of outside elements

Published September 5, 2004

PESHAWAR, Sept 4: PPP's former provincial chief Khwaja Mohammad Khan Hoti has said political parties need not any outside enemy to destroy them as they themselves are doing this job with finesse.

Talking to a group of newsmen here at the Peshawar Press Club on Saturday, he denied that the establishment or any of its organ had ever tried to destablise the PPP or any other party for political gains. Every political party had its own establishment or a hidden mafia that ate them from the inside, he said.

He said he knew many of political stalwarts who begged for blessings of intelligence agencies, but they had not been entertained by the 'invisible people.' He also denied he was toeing the line of some quarters to make a dent or to create his own faction in the PPP.

He said the PPP had become hostage to a particular gang, which wanted to keep Mr Asif Ali Zardari permanently inside the prison and Ms Benazir Bhutto out of Pakistan on the one or the other pretext.

"This gang has been bashing every respectable person in the PPP to get their anti-PPP agenda completed. They are making the job of anti-PPP forces easy. I had refused to seek any instruction from this so-called loyal gang," he added.

He said he was a follower of the late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who had laid down his life for the downtrodden people of the country but refused to beg for his life from usurpers.