HYDERABAD (THE DAILY TIMES): Asif Ali Zardari was welcomed by a crowd of thousands of supporters as he arrived in a motorcade at the Hyderabad Toll Plaza from Karachi Friday evening.

“I am nothing without the people. I was released because you prayed and struggled,” said Mr Zardari waving back at the crowd in acknowledgment.

The provincial president of the PPP, Syed Qaim Ali Shah and Malik Asad Sikandar, the nazim of Dadu district, accompanied him in his white Toyota Land Cruiser. He had been in a blue Land Cruiser but had to leave it because it did not have a sunroof that he could wave from. He stayed with the slogan-chanting crowd for some minutes. He had received similar welcomes by crowds of workers at Kohistan Dingri/Thana Bola Khan between Thatta and Dadu, Nooriabad and other places on the Superhighway. It took him nearly seven hours to cover the 150km stretch from Karachi to Hyderabad.

It was a typical People’s Party show, with party activists and officials, among them MNAs and MPAs, waving party flags and banners and placards, and holding aloft portraits of the late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, party chairperson Benazir Bhutto and Mr Zardari.

The provincial leadership of the PPP had made arrangements for the event at two days’ notice.

Many senior workers described the rally as a show of strength and a sign of the revival of their party, and an indication of the ‘elevated status of Mr Zardari’ from being just the husband of Benazir Bhutto, an observer said.

There were inevitable slogans, punctuated by fireworks, against President Pervez Musharraf and Chief Minister Arbab Ghulam Rahim, together with those greeting Mr Zardari’s release on November 22 after eight years in prison.

Other slogans repeated the PPP’s demands for withdrawal of cases against Ms Bhutto and her husband and other party leaders.

The most popular slogan in the rally was “ab teri bari, Zardari,” implying that Mr Zardari would be prime minister.

In Sehwan, Mr Zardari prayed at the shrine of Hazrat Lal Shehbaz Qalandar and later left for his hometown of Nawabshah. Party officials said he would visit Larkana, the hometown of the Bhutto family, on Sunday. He is likely to speak at a gathering in Sukkur on Monday. Zardari’s route to Sehwan, Nawabshah and Larkana was decorated with posters, banners and party flags. Before the procession left Karachi, thousands of PPP supporters joined it, which crawled from Mr Zardari’s Bilawal House residence towards the city’s exit point of Sohrab Goth.

Along the way, the motorcade was showered with rose petals from the balconies of the apartments along the road from Bilawal House to Schon Circle, Punjab Chowrangi, Kalapul, Shahrah-e-Faisal and Rashid Minhas Road. Other PPP leaders who accompanied Mr Zardari on his first visit to interior Sindh after his release included leader of the opposition in the Sindh Assembly Nisar Ahmed Khuhro, Khursheed Shah, Yousuf Talpur, Aijaz Jakhrani, information secretary Taj Haider, Mir Munawar Talpur, Agha Siraj Durrani, Rashid Rabbani, Habib Junaidi, Engineer Giyanchand, Jameel Soomro, Aijaz Durrani, Waqar Mehdi, Akbar Mirza, HM Ghanchi, Shabbir Qureshi and former foreign minister Aseff Ahmed Ali. Some MNAs and MPAs from Punjab joined the motorcade.

‘PPPP will not make deals for power’

HYDERABAD: Asif Ali Zardari said on Friday that the Pakistan People’s Party Parliamentarians (PPPP) would not make any deals to come to power, as it did not believe in the politics of deal-making. Talking to reporters at Hyderabad Toll Plaza before leaving for Sehwan, he demanded the government hold fresh and transparent elections. He also hoped democracy would soon be restored in the country. He said the PPPP had started campaigning and that 2005 would be the year of elections. Mr Zardari said his spouse, Benazir Bhutto, would soon return to Pakistan. staff report

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