Dropping hints that Pervez Musharraf's [Images] days in office may be numbered, Pakistan's ruling Pakistan Peoples Party leader Asif Ali Zardari said on Thursday that there is "tremendous" pressure from people who want the President's ouster and that he (Zardari) has "no choice".
    
Describing Musharraf as a "relic of the past", Zardari in an interview to PTI, however, candidly admitted that the President still enjoys powers under the Constitution to dissolve Parliament and dismiss the prime minister.
    
To a pointed query if Musharraf's days as President are numbered, Zardari evaded a direct reply saying: "I don't know whether his days are numbered or my days are numbered or our government's days are numbered. Who knows that?"
    
"He still has 58(2b) and he has a tremendous amount of power behind him. If he moves, he moves," Zardari said, referring to the President's powers under Article 58(2b) of the Constitution that allow him to dissolve an elected Parliament and thus dismiss the prime minister.
    
The "bottomline" is that the people of Pakistan want Musharraf to go. "And I am the servant of the people, not the master of the people," the PPP chairman said.
   
"The President is a relic of the past and he stands somewhere between us and democracy....He has taken off his uniform thanks to the dialogue by my wife (late former premier Benazir Bhutto [Images]) and the world pressure," Zardari said.
 
"But that does not make Musharraf into a democrat or a civilian president. That doesn't mean that his presidency is legal. I've got all these issues. I have a tremendous amount of pressure from the people of Pakistan," Zardari said.

The public, Zardari said, is telling the PPP that "we don't want bread, we don't want electricity, but we want Musharraf out".

His comments came as a presidential spokesman asserted Musharraf would not step down in the wake of reports that the government was finalising a package of constitutional amendments aimed at curbing the President's sweeping powers.

Sources close to the President also dismissed reports that he had offered to resign if the government validated actions taken by him during last year's emergency rule.

Pointing out that he is a politician who is "amenable to my people", Zardari said the PPP is working to "come up with a liveable formula" for ushering in full-fledged democracy because "after all that has happened, you cannot have an unelected and non-democratic President".

"You just cannot," Zardari emphasised. "Now no matter whether I like it or don't like it, or whether Musharraf likes it or anybody else doesn't like it, I have no choice. For two months, I have been trying to do a whitewash or whatever you may call it... That's okay, let's have national reconciliation, but people are not willing to accept my position on that," Zardari said.

Zardari also indicated that the issue of reinstating the judges sacked by Musharraf during last year's emergency would be tackled through the constitutional package.

The issue has already strained relations between the PPP and PML-N, which withdrew its nine ministers from the federal Cabinet after failing to achieve the restoration of the deposed judges by the self-imposed deadline of May 12.

PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif has said his party will only offer issue-based support to the government.