President Zardari rules out martial law

Zardari says the problems the country is currently faced with are too grave to inspire the military to such a move.

Dismissing the possibility of a military coup in Pakistan, President Asif Ali Zardari has said that the problems the country is currently faced with are too grave to inspire the military to such a move. “I don’t think anybody in his right mind will want to take this responsibility. It’s only democracy that can carry this yoke,” Zardari said in an interview with foreign journalists in Islamabad.

He said it will take at least three years to recover from the devastating floods that have engulfed one-fifth of the country and have affected more than 20 million people, Time Magazine reported. Zardari insisted that his government is capable of rising to the occasion. “Surely we will try and meet [expectations] as much as we can, and as far as we can. We will stretch the band-aid to the maximum.”

Throughout the interview, he cast his mind back to when the country was last plunged into a major crisis: the aftermath of the December 2007 assassination of his wife, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. “At the time, we said democracy is the best revenge,” Zardari said.

He also warned that militants in Pakistan are keen to exploit the situation in the wake of floods. He said Pakistan’s resolve to fight the militants has not wavered.

“I see always such organisations and such people taking advantage of this human crisis. It is again a challenge to not let them take advantage of this human crisis,” he said.

The president’s comments follow MQM chief Altaf Hussain’s controversial remarks on Sunday that his group will support “patriotic” generals if they take “any martial law-type action” against Pakistan’s corrupt politicians and feudal lords.

Regarding Hussain’s comments, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani said on Monday that the country has been confronting a number of challenges and the government does not wish to “indulge in any sort of confrontational politics”. (With additional input from ONLINE)

Published in The Express Tribune, August 25^th, 2010.