By IANS,
Islamabad : Beleaguered Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has been outflanked and “is standing alone today”, well on the road to impeachment, says Asif Ali Zardari, co-chair of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) that leads the country’s ruling coalition.
“Musharraf is standing alone today due to our political strategies because we have succeeded in conveying our message to the international community that stability in Pakistan can only be possible through genuine democracy and not through dictatorship,” Zardari said Monday during a meeting with the members of the Sindh assembly.
The PPP is also hopeful that breakaway leader Aftab Sherpao, who was a minister in the previous dispensation, will support the impeachment motion that was moved in the National Assembly Monday.
Adding impetus to the impeachment move, the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) assembly Tuesday passed by an overwhelming majority a motion urging Musharraf to seek a trust vote from the Electoral College comprising the four provincial assemblies and the two houses of parliament.
The Punjab assembly had passed a similar resolution Monday, while the assemblies of Sindh and Balochistan are also expected to do so.
“We are constantly in contact with Mr. Sherpao. We are hopeful that his party’s members…will vote for the impeachment resolutions against President Musharraf,” Dawn Tuesday quoted a PPP leader as saying.
Sherpao was the interior minister in the previous Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid government that Musharraf backed and which lost power in the February general elections.
When contacted, he said his faction was yet to decide on which way it would vote but “said his party would vote for the success of democracy, indicating that its members might vote against the president”, Dawn noted.
He confirmed that the ruling coalition had been in contact with him at the federal and provincial levels.
The PPP-S has four members in the National Assembly and the Senate.