Accepting defeat: Gilani steps down as PPP vice chairman

MULTAN:

Accepting some of the responsibility for the Pakistan Peoples Party’s poor showing in the May 11 election, former prime minister Yousaf Raza Gilani has quit as the party’s vice chairman.

Addressing the media at the Multan Press Club, Gilani said that the responsibility lay partly with him as he remained the country’s prime minister for more than four years. “But the entire responsibility does not lie with the PPP; the major crises were bequeathed to the PPP leadership by Musharraf’s government.”

Elaborating on the PML-N victory, the former premier said that the PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif should be ‘indebted to the PPP’ as the party had honoured its promise of holding transparent elections, which has resulted in his victory. “PPP will remain the sloganeer of democracy,” he said. “We will now sit in the opposition, play an effective role and observe all democratic norms.”

Gilani further clarified that his son’s abduction was not related to his resignation and that he had no differences with the PPP leadership. Ali Haider Gilani, his son, was kidnapped from a PPP meeting in Multan on May 10.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 14^th, 2013.