By Muhammad Najeeb, IANS
Islamabad : Saying that President Pervez Musharraf was the root cause of all evils in the country and will “have to go”, former Pakistan prime minister Nawaz Sharif Monday demanded his immediate resignation and announced his party would contest the planned Jan 8 polls.
Musharraf should go without any further delay and “further damage to the country”, said Sharif, head of the Pakistan Muslim League, at a press conference.
“We have decided to contest the Jan 8 polls but we demand immediate resignation of Pervez Musharraf before the elections,” he said. On Thursday, Sharif had announced boycott of the polls following the slaying of Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) chief Benazir Bhutto, another former prime minister.
He said he had announced boycott to show solidarity with the PPP after the killing of Bhutto. “But after PPP has decided to go for polls and also requested us to contest the elections, we have decided to go for the Jan 8 polls,” said Sharif, who returned to the country last month after more than seven years in forced exile in Saudi Arabia and London.
Sharif who has been barred by the government to contest the elections is leading his party and has fielded candidates throughout the country in elections for national and provincial assemblies.
He said the government was looking for excuses to postpone the elections as it “suits Musharraf and his cronies”.
“He (Musharraf) just wants continuation in power, nothing is dear to him except his own interest to stay in power,” said Sharif, adding that Musharraf himself is a problem and can’t be the solution.
Now “Musharraf will have to go”. “Rather he’s on his way out, he can’t be saved any more,” said Sharif about Musharraf, who last month took oath as president for another five years after quitting as army chief.
He said Bhutto was a great leader and had said minutes before her assassination that she would continue struggling to establish democracy in the country.
Asked whether he would work with Musharraf if voted to power, Sharif said that it was “impossible to work with a man who had subverted the constitution, who had sacked an elected government and who had slaughtered the judiciary?”
On Bhutto’s murder, he said that she herself had named people who could be behind her murder. “I don’t want to say anything when she herself has said it… you may read her letter with her spokesman in Washington, Mark Siegel.”