Leghari launches new party

ISLAMABAD, Aug 15: Former Pakistan president Farooq Khan Leghari launched a new political party on Friday in Lahore and said that he woul...

ISLAMABAD, Aug 15: Former Pakistan president Farooq Khan Leghari launched a new political party on Friday in Lahore and said that he would take the country “out from its present political and economic crisis”.

Leghari blamed the two main parties led by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Opposition leader Benazir Bhutto for being responsible for the current economic crisis in the country and the anxiety in provinces over their constitutional rights and the deteriorating law and order situation.

“After gross mismanagement by the two political parties, people are totally disappointed and one question is being asked: Has Pakistan become a failed state and will it turn into Afghanistan or Somalia ?” Leghari said.

Story continues below this ad

But he said that despite the odds, he believed that the Pakistani people were capable of changing their fate and his new “Millat” (Nation) party would “lead the way”.

Leghari, an Oxford educated tribal chief from the south of Punjab, resigned as president in early December after losing aconstitutional battle with Sharif. He has been elected president in November 1993 as a candidate of Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP). But he dismissed the Bhutto government on charges of wrong-doing in November 1996.

Leghari’s party, the Millat Party, comprises middle-class professionals besides landlords and retired bureaucrats. But so far, no major political figure has agreed to join his party.