ISLAMABAD: On the eve of 64th birthday of PPP’s slain chairperson Benazir Bhutto on June 21, President Pakistan People’s Party Parliamentarians (PPPP) and former President of Pakistan Asif Ali Zardari has paid glowing tributes to her for “her vision, steadfastness and relentless fight for the cause of women and downtrodden on the one hand and upholding the banner of democracy aloft while leading from the front the fight against militants created and nurtured by successive dictators and their henchmen in the country, on the other.”

In his message, here on Tuesday, Asif Zardari said that on this birthday of the Muslim World’s first directly-elected woman Prime Minister it is worrying that the anti-women brigade created by the dictators continues to suppress women, even calling for violence against them, in the name of religion.

“We condemn and reject the hysterical anti-women noises being made by these elements,” he said, asking people to follow Benazir Bhutto in standing up to militants and extremists and not allow them foist their ideology through brute force.

He cited that the last words uttered by Benazir Bhutto at public meeting in Rawalpindi were her appeal to people to stand up to extremism, dictatorship and to banish poverty and ignorance and that is the roadmap for PPP to make Pakistan a modern and pluralistic state.

The PPPP President said that his Party would continue to fight militancy, strengthen democracy and extricate the poor from abject poverty and degradation.

Zardari also paid tributes to those who laid down their lives or suffered in the course of democratic struggle and in fighting regressive elements.

“On the eve of Benazir Bhutto’s birthday we salute them all,” he concluded.—INP