Daily Times

In a message on Friday on the eve of International Day of Democracy which is today i.e September 15, former President Asif Ali Zardari has called upon all institutions to work within their constitutional limits.

The former President said that in addition to rule of law, transparency, across the board accountability and tolerance of dissent, democracy also requires that institutions work within their constitutional limits.

He said that the nature of threats to democracy has changed overtime. Now, democracy is under threat from the militants and extremists who wish to impose their agenda by force and not through Parliament. There was a time when democracy was directly assaulted and this assault was protected by the frameworks like doctrine of necessity, the legal frame work orders (LFOs) and the provisional constitutional orders (PCOs) upheld by PCO judges, added the former President.

The celebrations of democracy today should also enhance peoples’ awareness about the new forms of threats to democracy and the need to guard against them, he continued.

The former President also paid huge tributes to Shaheed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto as icons of democracy and countless political leaders and workers belonging to different political parties, who rendered huge sacrifices for the cause of democracy.

Published in Daily Times, September 15^th 2018.