Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani on Tuesday said Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto brought about the real revolution and even the towering politicians of the times could not stand in the way of people's empowerment.

He was addressing the PPP members of National and Provincial Assemblies, office-holders of Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), Peoples Student Federation (PSF) and Peoples Youth Organization (PYO) from Sargodha Division here at the Prime Minister House.

The Prime Minister said that PPP was the name of an ideology and constant struggle irrespective of whether it stayed in or out of power. He said that "we came into power because of people, while others stepped into corridors of power through other means." "We play politics of principles whereas others change their principles for sake of power," he added.

The Prime Minister said that it had been tradition of PPP workers that they neither submitted themselves to coercion nor gave in to dictatorship, adding, "We faced the rigors of imprisonment."

He said Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Shaheed Benazir Bhutto bore the rigors of imprisonment and also laid down their lives but their ideologies could not be eliminated. `I was also jailed but did not deviate from the ideology of PPP,' the Prime Minister added.

The Prime Minister said that those who come and leave the party are opportunists, adding, the workers of PPP are loyal to their ideology. `I appeal to intellectuals to regard PPP and its leaders as an asset and protect them,' he said.

He revealed that `angels' would come to him in jails and invite him and members of PPP to join the fold of Musharraf, adding, these angels promised power in return for trading conscience but "we never considered any back-door entry into power nor did we commit disloyalty."

He said, "We believed that only the people were the source and repository of all powers."

The Prime Minister said that regretfully all dictators were portrayed as innocent, while all politicians are considered corrupt.

He said that he had 124 MNAs in an Assembly of 342, which were 50 votes short of the simple majority. Despite this, he was the longest serving elected Prime Minister of the country by the grace of Allah Almighty.

He said that this Assembly unanimously restored the Constitution of 1973, which an Assembly having two-thirds majority could not do. This government, he said, considerably increased the resources of the federating units through NFC and gave identity to Khyber Pakhtunkhawa and Gilgit-Baltistan.

The Prime Minister said that while others sought to get into power with the help of props, PPP got power solely on the strength of people's support in '70s, '80s, '90s, and 2008.