February 26, 2003	Wednesday	Zul Hijjah 24, 1423

Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window).

PESHAWAR, Feb 25: The Pakistan People’s Party has decided to take a stern action against nine of its MPAs who, it says, betrayed the party nominee during the Senate elections.

Speaking at a joint news conference at the Peshawar Press Club on Tuesday, provincial PPP chief Khwaja Khan Hoti, general secretary Najmuddin Khan and party candidate Sardar Ali Khan accused the nine MPAs of stabbing the party in the back for petty financial gains.

Mr Ali, who secured only one vote, said the party MPAs had not only ditched him but had also betrayed the party, workers and voters.

He said the PPP had awarded a ticket to Syed Qamar Abbas, but the MPAs refused to vote him. Later, he said, PPP chairperson Benazir Bhutto advised him to file nomination papers. However, he continued, the PPP parliamentary leader in the House told him that MPAs would give him only five votes and therefore, he should arrange for the required five more votes. When some of the party leaders tried to convince the disagreeing MPAs, he said, they abused them.

Only Syed Zahir Ali Shah, he said, voted for him and the rest of the nine MPAs sold them out at the hands of wealthy independents. He said one of the MPAs, Tariq Khattak, contacted him and told that him they were under pressure “by the invisible hands of the federal government” and could not vote for him.

Mr Hoti said disciplinary measures would be taken against the renegades. The PPP, he added, had survived such betrayals and pressures in the past.

In reply to a question, he said PPP workers would act politically and go for the social boycott of the renegades in their districts and hold demonstrations outside the MPAs’ houses.

Najmuddin Khan pointed out that all the opposition parties in the House — the ANP, PML-Q, PPP and PPP (Sherpao) — had an equal number of MPAs and added that the ANP, PML-Q and PPP-S each got elected two senators, but the PPP had bagged only one seat.