Those with a service tenure of just three years can't decide nation's fate: Zardari

The veteran politician advises 'national institutions' to operate within their constitutional ambit

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Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari has said that those ‘appointed’ to serve for a period of three years do not have the right to make decisions for the people.

“Only the parliament has the constitutional authority to make the decisions. You have no life, no future. The solutions to the country's problems can only be achieved by implementing the Constitution,” the PPP supremo said while addressing a public meeting in Hyderabad district on Saturday.

Zardari, who had made a similar statement in 2016 which had led to his leaving the county for a good one and a half years, also accused the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government of lacking the capability to govern the country.

“Why the PTI has been ‘brought’ into power? It would have been better that you had allowed fair elections ... after fighting each other the parties would have formed a government of national consensus," he added.



"I had said to some people when [former prime minister] Nawaz Sharif was being brought into power that fear God and don't do this. But they first brought him to power and they later began fighting with him as he could not run the government. This joke should stop.”

He said the PTI has completed more than 100 days in power but they now argue that the time is not sufficient for the new government to deliver.  "Let me tell you what we [the PPP government] did in the first 100 days. We sent [General  Pervez] Musharraf packing, defeated terrorists occupying Swat valley and launched Benazir [Income Support Programme] cards."

Zardari said progress cannot be achieved by opening a shop one day and then closing it and continuing that cycle. The customers will stop coming to such a shop. "Why don't you understand sustain, sustain, sustain and evolve, evolve, evolve ... the progress lies in evolution.”

He questioned the government's wisdom in attempting to lure foreign investment at a time when the local businessmen are not satisfied with its policies. He said the country does not require the foreign investment except the expertise and technology.

"If someone [foreigner] spends a dollar, he takes away 10 dollars. I can bring you investment from inside Pakistan. It’s better to give the chance to local businessmen."

He described the rulers sitting in Islamabad as blind, deaf and dumb who are oblivious of the miseries the people are suffering due to their policies.  He accused the PTI-led government of snatching livelihoods of around 500,000 people in Karachi by demolishing shops and houses and of alleged attempts to roll back the Benazir Income Support Programme.

He said PM Imran Khan can be a good sportsman but it does not guarantee that he will be an equally successful politician, adding that politics is like sending Musharraf home.

“Now he [Musharraf] realises what happened to him. I don't want his death but to see him alive so that he can see the growing power and popularity of Benazir Bhutto's PPP. Musharraf has sunk into oblivion as people do not bother to know how he is living in Dubai.”

Zardari praised the PPP's founding leader Zulfikar Ali Bhutto for understanding the threat from an economically and militarily stronger India and bringing the nuclear technology to offset that threat.  Similarly, the former PPP chairperson and PM Benazir Bhutto gave Pakistan the missile technology.

According to him, a former army chief asked Benazir about the possible consequences that she might suffer in reaction to bringing the missile technology. "I know it may cost my life but for Pakistan I will do it," he quoted his late wife as replying.