LAHORE - Former foreign minister and PPP MNA Sardar Assef Ahmad Ali has said Pevez Musharraf is not a constitutional president but a de facto whose eligibility as President has yet to be determined. The present judiciary and Pervez Musharraf as President were not de jure but de facto in status however, Pervez Musharraf wielded Article 58(2)b power to pack up the assemblies anytime, said Sardar Ahmad Ali while addressing at a seminar organised by the People Lawyers Forum on the subject "People are the real heirs to the rule" at the LHCBA here Wednesday. Senior leader PPP Mian Muhammad Jahangir presided over the seminar while former secretary LHCBA Shahid Muhamood Bhatti, PPP leader Prof Ijazul Hassan, SM Masud, Samiullah Khan and others also spoke. Sardar Assef Ahmad justifying the course of the PCO to bring the deposed judges back to the job said, the restoration of judges through executive order in a situation when the court had validated the PCO would not only split the Supreme Court but also prompt Mushrraf to use Article 58(2)b. He said Musharraf was looking for this way and the PPP leadership was blocking it by adopting the mode of Constitutional package to restore the judiciary. Referring to lawyers and the PML-N demand for parliamentary resolution to restore the judiciary, he said, they wanted the parliament to do it while the Parliament itself remains under threat of the Article 58(2)b. As such the package has to dispense with this provision to remove the threat too. As to the Murree Declaration, he termed it a mistake by the PPP, which it later on realised after being informed by the legal experts that it could not be implemented. Ex-minister in the Benazir Cabinet (1993-96), shedding light on the current situation in tribal areas said, the government was being forced to talk to the extremists which would simply mean permitting them to establish a state within the state to enforce a shariah of their choice ending the existence of Pakistan. As a nation, he said, they had to decide whether this was the sort of country for which we had rendered countless sacrifices and Qauid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Allama Iqbal had dreamt of. He said the country was passing through a serious situation wherein the PPP leadership was acting sagaciously and appropriately to save it from any further damage. SM Masud said on the occasion that the nation direly needed a strong unity in order to meet the challenges, which he added, were as serious as that in 1947, which demanded of the rulers to share rule and decision-making with the common man. He said that the need of the hour was to identify the enemy and defeat him to move forward but the problem was that difficulties of the common man were not being realised even in this trying situation in the country. He said the people must be given due right to rule if the country had to be saved against disintegration and for that all political parties needed to sit together. He said vested interest and the establishment were equally strong even today to deny the people their rights. This situation was needed to be addressed on priority, he added. Mian Muhammad Jahangir said dissociation with the people had become a culture with the political parties. That is why discrimination between the haves and the have notes is increasing so much so that all the woes are for the poor and all facilities and privileges to the rich. No load-shedding is seen at the President, Prime Minister House or at the official residences but it was up to 18 hours at the house of a common man, he said adding, if the system has to be run and the country to save, the sense of alienation of the poor must remove and he be participated in the rule, he added. Prof Ijazul Hassan terming the present situation serious said the PPP owed a great responsibility to deliver on the security of the country.