All Institutions Must Work Within Ambit: President Zardari

KARACHI, Pakistan News: President Asif Ali Zardari has urged all state institutions to work within their specified ambit, and denied that institutions are on a collision course.

“All the institutions should perform their duties in their defined jurisdictions. There is neither any clash among state institutions nor I see any such possibility in future.

The president said democracy, rather than the judiciary, checked dictatorship. He said dictatorship could only be checked by promoting democratic and political forces. He said he was fighting a war against “undemocratic thinking”.

Zardari said the PML-N “weakened the federation” by resigning from the federal cabinet, but the PPP did not do so in Punjab.

The president said his opponents were against him for holding the office of president. “My opponents can’t see me holding the office of president… the PML-N fielded a candidate against me in the presidential election,” he said, adding that despite the tactics employed by his opponents, he was still in office.

He said former president Farooq Laghari had chosen to become a party to an “anti-people plot”, but “he now has nowhere to go, as anyone who parts ways with the PPP had no political future”.

Zardari said the PPP never accepted Pervez Musharraf as a constitutional head of state.

“Divergent opinion is the beauty of democracy. But the opposition should play a positive role… criticism for [the sake of] criticism can be suitable only for TV talk shows,” he said.

Zardari said he reinstated Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry when he thought the time was “suitable”.

Defending his speech in Naudero to mark the death anniversary of Benazir Bhutto, Zardari said he delivered the keynote address in the capacity of PPP co-chairman.

Earlier, President Asif Ali Zardari vowed to fight every conspiracy against the democratic set up, and said invisible forces were in action to remove him from the Presidency. He said the government believed in a policy of reconciliation.