Benazir Bhutto: “New Pakistan Government Has Committed Treason”

Pakistani liberal opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, after being released from house arrest on Friday, rejected the caretaker government appointed by President Pervez Musharraf to hold general elections in January, says NDTV.

” ‘We do not accept this government. It has committed treason by taking oath under Provincial Constitutional Order (PCO),’ she told reporters hours after she was freed from three days of house arrest in Lahore.

Following the dissolution of the lower house of parliament at the end of its five-year term late on Thursday, Musharraf on Friday swore in a new cabinet headed by the chairman of the upper house, Mohammedmian Soomro. Regarded as a loyal supporter of the military ruler, Soomro will oversee scheduled polls that Musharraf says will be held in the first week of January.

” ‘We demand that Musharraf take off his uniform. We want to see a neutral caretaker government which is acceptable for all opposition parties,’ Bhutto said, adding that only such a government could ensure fair elections.

“The PCO is the decree through which Musharraf, an army general who took power in a 1999 coup, imposed the state of emergency, suspending the constitution and taking several news channels off the air.”

Meanwhile hundreds of lawyers in Washington participated in a march in support of their colleagues in Pakistan on Wednesday, condemning President Pervez Musharraf’s suspension of the constitution, reports The Washingon Post.

” ‘We have witnessed a brutal attack on the rule of law,’ William Neukom, president of the American Bar Association, told the crowd, which marched two blocks from Independence Avenue to the Supreme Court. ‘We are here because we cannot forget the images of hundreds of our brave colleagues assaulted in the streets, carried off in police trucks’.”

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