Bhutto Says Leghari Had No Right To Dismiss Her

What he (Leghari) has done is against the vital interests of the unity, integrity and prosperity of Pakistan. He had no right to do this, Bhutto told a news conference at the Prime Minister's official residence in the capital.

Leghari dismissed Bhutto early on Tuesday, accusing her government of corruption, nepotism and misrule.

She vowed to fight her dismissal and the dissolution of parliament by President Farooq Leghari in court.

Bhutto said Leghari, a former party ally whom she had backed for the presidency, had vowed not to sack any government. He was elected on a mandate that he would never dismiss a government. He has broken his solemn pledge. I leave his fate in Allah's hands, she said.

 

One of Bhuttos former ministers said she planned to mount a legal challenge against Leghari's order ousting her.

Bhutto said the murder of her brother Murtaza on September 20 was a pre-meditated conspiracy to destabilise democracy. The bullet that was meant to kill my brother physically was meant to destroy me politically. It was a conspiracy against the Bhutto family," she said.

She called on Leghari to resign if he wanted to prove he had not acted out of a lust for power and allow the chairman of the Senate (upper house) to become the acting President.

I will go to the court expecting justice, she said, noting that the Supreme Court had reinstated the government of her main political opponent Nawaz Sharif after it had been dismissed by the then President Ghulam Ishaq Khan in 1993.

Bhutto said she did not know the whereabouts of her husband, former investment minister Asif Ali Zardari, who was detained on Tuesday, and accused Leghari of arranging his abduction.