ISLAMABAD - Former Interior Minister and Chairman Institute of Research and Reforms Rehman Malik yesterday said that Pakistan People’s Party belonged to people of Pakistan.

In a statement, he said the people of Lahore had shown their full confidence in the PPP in the recent election as they had come to know that “PPP is the only party that belongs to the people.” 

He said that former President Asif Ali Zardari is a seasoned politician and he knows when and what political game to play. 

He said that seriousness of the opposition could be gauged from the date of Long March which is given four months later and everyone would see that this date too would be postponed. He said that the PPP had advised the PDM to either resign from the Parliament or bring a no-confidence motion but on the contrary PPP was expelled from the PDM. The former interior minister said the country lacks the rule of law because the law only applies to the poor and democracy is in public auction and buyers pay huge sums to become members of Parliament and senators. 

“Unfortunately the people are being befooled by both the government and the opposition because they are in the race for power at the expense of the poor,” he added.

 He said that both the government and opposition are completely failed to curb inflation and the role of the IMF and the IMF operatives had brought the Pakistani economy to the brink of disaster.

Rehman Malik further said that the continuous and rapid rise in poverty and inflation is creating serious problems for the country and the people and the time is not far when the confidence of the poor people in Parliament and democracy will erode and as a result, the people will lose their patience to come on streets. “We need to fix the system and without any practical performance, nothing will happen to the poor with flowery speeches and tall promises and claims,” he advised.

Referring to the Sialkot lynching tragedy, Senator Rehman Malik said that every Pakistani is saddened by the cold-blooded murder of the Sri Lankan citizen and this cruelty and barbarism is highly condemnable for which Pakistan is being embarrassed all over the world and in future times the world will call us as the world most dangerous nation. He demanded the government to give the highest national honor to Sri Lankan citizen Priyantha Diavadana for his services and as a goodwill gesture. He said that neither our law nor our religion allows killing by any mob and in Islam, one killing is killing all humanity.

The former Interior Minister said that it should also be investigated as to how the West imposed a ban on imports from Pakistan in a few hours of the incident. He said, “I must say that this incident was an attack on Pakistan’s exports from mini-Japan, i.e. Sialkot.” 

He further said that the government should review the report of DisinfoLab Lab EU and this incident is going to be a big blow to us in the international community, FATF, and Human Rights Commission and there should be a soft response action plan with the government to present its point of view?