Rocking the boat: Political stability need of the hour, says Wattoo

LAHORE:

Pakistan Peoples Party’s (PPP) Punjab chapter president Manzoor Ahmed Wattoo said on Sunday that the country was in urgent need of political stability.

Political stability and economic development are inter-linked, the PPP leader said in a statement.

He said some political parties were engaged in the politics of agitation. “They should be mindful of the dangers that poses to the continuity of the democratic process.”

Wattoo said some anti-democratic elements had joined hands with the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) for its campaign against the alleged vote rigging. “Their agenda is anti-people and anti-democracy,” he said. The responsibility to save the system was with PTI chairman Imran Khan who had given the call for the protest, he added.

“It would have been better had the nation been celebrating May 11 as another year of consolidation of democracy… instead of seeing this hullabaloo.”

He said the PPP favoured democracy and continued to back the government. Wattoo said the country could no longer afford the specter of dictatorship. “It is heartening to see that the nation has taken the ownership of democracy and freedom of judiciary and the media.”

Wattoo said multiple dangers posed an existential threat to the country and “prudence is expected from the political leadership to ward off such dangers”.

“The political leadership should jointly outdo the enemies of democracy who are out with a vengeance,” he said. PPP’s Punjab secretary general Tanvir Ashraf Kaira said the party backed democracy and former president Asif Ali Zardari’s recent meeting with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was a manifestation of this commitment.

“The party will continue to support the democratic dispensation no matter how inhospitable the environment is in the country,” he said in a statement.

Kaira urged politicians not to resort to confrontational politics and follow the policy of reconciliation. He said the politics of agitation would result in political divisions.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 12^th, 2014.