ISLAMABAD, 31 March 2008 — Asif Ali Zardari, the leader of Pakistan People’s Party, yesterday assured the country that the new ruling coalition was not seeking a confrontation with President Pervez Musharraf.
At a joint news conference with Nawaz Sharif, the leader of his coalition partner, Pakistan Muslim League (N), Zardari said: “Parliament will forge an equation with the president. We are not seeking confrontation, but we want to strengthen democratic institutions.”
But Sharif intervened to point out that Musharraf on the other hand had been uncooperative with the new rulers. “A session of the new Punjab Assembly was deliberately delayed in order to create a wedge between the PPP and PML (N),” he alleged.
And a leader in Pakistan’s new government called for Musharraf to quit, a day after the new prime minister vowed to move away from the US-backed leader’s strong-arm tactics against militants.
“The sooner he resigns the better it is for himself and for the democratic process,” said Ahsan Iqbal, a lawmaker from Sharif’s party who is tipped to become education minister in the new Cabinet. “On Feb. 18 people voted against his policies and voted for change,” Iqbal said.
Opposition parties swept last month’s parliamentary elections amid resentment over Musharraf’s increasingly authoritarian rule, Pakistan’s mounting economic problems and a surge in militant attacks.
The defeat has triggered calls for Musharraf, a former army chief who seized power in a military coup eight years ago, to resign.
Parliament elected Yousaf Raza Gilani, a loyalist of slain opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, as prime minister last week. Today, Musharraf is expected to swear in more than 20 members of the new Cabinet.
In his inaugural speech Saturday, Gilani delivered a rebuke over Musharraf’s military tactics in the lawless tribal belt along the Afghan border where Al-Qaeda and Taleban militants operate.
