ISLAMABAD: President Asif Ali Zardari is said to have given final touches to a new political script for his own survival. The script has been finalised with the help of his top aides after a series of late night meetings at the Presidency during the last week. He has been advised not to quit, come what may, political sources said here yesterday.

The sources said that coalition ally MQM chief Altaf Hussain has been politely told that the president could not accept his advice to quit as president as such decisions were not taken in “panic” or under duress.

Sources privy to the discussions revealed that President Zardari has decided not to quit under any pressure, whether political or otherwise. They said that by rejecting the advice of Hussain to resign, Zardari has sent a loud message to all his friends and foes alike that he would not quit, come

what may.

“Zardari has decided to face any eventuality, and he is not going to resign under duress,” one of his aides claimed when asked to comment on reports of his likely resignation in the first week of December. Sources said after Hussain delivered him a message through a close aide, Zardari received several briefings from his top aides about life after November 28, the day the controversial amnesty law NRO will stand expired and a slew of corruption cases against top PPP leadership, including Zardari, will stand revived, endangering their political survival.

The sources said in these meetings even names of those politicians and bureaucrats were reviewed who would be required to seek bails from the courts if the cases settled under the NRO were reopened. But it has been decided that no minister or bureaucrat would seek bail on his own as they all would wait for the courts to reopen these cases.

One top aide of the president did not have any doubt in his mind that “instead of tendering resignation, Zardari would prefer to be dispatched in a coffin to Garhi Khuda Bux (the ancestral graveyard of the Bhuttos) from the Presidency for burial beside his assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.