ISLAMABAD, Jan 12: The former prime minister and chairperson of Pakistan People‘s Party, Benazir Bhutto, has asked the PPP legislators to protest against the manner in which NAB was being used to achieve political objectives.

In a letter addressed to elected PPP parliamentarians Benazir said that the intelligence agencies and NAB were twin pillars of the new order of dictatorship which needed to be exposed.

She said: “As newly-elected PPP Parliamentarians enjoying the blessings of the Pakistan People’s Party, I expect you to raise your voice for the people to end the injustice that stalks a once proud land of a people who gave heroic sacrifices because they refused to accept dictation. It is the PPP, and PPP Parliamentarians and workers that are writing the history of the next chapter of the people’s struggle for a society that brings peace and progress, safety and security and freedom”.

Benazir said that the PPP was the one federal party with the courage to challenge this unjust order which “dawned on November 4, 1996” with a view to use the state apparatus to forge a new kind of dictatorship through rigged elections and “kings parties”.

The forces of dictatorship damaged the prestige and honour of a land, that produced great sons and daughters like Quaid-i-Azam and Quaid-i-Awam, must look with shock and horror at what is happening to Pakistanis, she said.

“Today, even as we boast of “winning wars” after abandoning our soldiers in the snows of Siachen, our citizens are being fingerprinted even though we are the most allied ally of the West in the war against terror. This is proof of the poor leadership that our country is presently burdened with”.

She told legislators that this deplorable state of affairs can be reversed when we follow right policies that strengthen our Constitution and reform our law enforcement agencies. So poor is the state of our institutions that foreign agencies like the FBI come in to arrest suspects, she said.

Detailing fundamentalists’ design to send Pakistan into anarchy using NAB against politicians, the letter said: “For the purpose retired military officials, who, with General Zia promoted militancy in Afghanistan and opposed Pakistan People’s Party in Pakistan, were given jobs in National Accountability Bureau. Justice was killed as the state apparatus trampled the Constitution and laws of the land to wrongly arrest people and torture them with a view to extract perjured statements.

“Prosecutors had links to the anti-people forces. For example, Farooq Adam was a convict of the Attock Conspiracy Case. So is the present prosecutor. Mian Arshad, a PPP worker, was killed under the directions of Governor Maqbool to get a confession at all costs.

“Moreover, embezzlement of huge amounts, including $200 million of pension funds belonging to the people of Pakistan and the purchase of $4 billion from the open market (involving huge commissions of tens of millions of dollars) remains un- investigated.

“The death of democracy, the killing of justice, the miseries of our people, the collapse of our hospitals and schools, the growing unemployment are threats to the wellbeing of the Pakistani people and the Nation itself.”