March 9, 2003	Sunday	Muharram 5, 1424

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NOWSHERA, March 8: PPP leader Asif Ali Zardari said on Thursday that disciplinary action would be taken against those party MPAs in the NWFP Assembly who voted against party’s nominees in the Senate elections.

Talking to newsmen after hearing in a corruption case at Attock court, Mr Zardari said that the party MPAs were asked to vote for Sardar Ali Khan and Farhatullah Babar. “Therefore, those who did not vote for Sardar Ali have violated the party decision. These people have betrayed the party. Party workers would hold them accountable and the party too would take action against them,” he said.

The statement by Asif Zardari is the latest in the series by party leaders and MPAs blaming each other for the party’s poor performance in the recently held Senate elections.

A party spokesman regretted a statement by former interior minister Naseerullah Khan Babar who had given a clean chit to MPAs for their vote in the Senate elections in which only one candidate managed to get through while the other, Sardar Ali Khan, lost badly.

The loss prompted allegations of sell-out of votes by party MPAs, who vehemently denied the charge, saying they had swapped votes in accordance with the directives of the party chairperson Benazir Bhutto.

The spokesman however, insisted that Ms Bhutto had nominated Sardar Ali and Farhatullah Babar for the general and technocrat seats respectively and had communicated the same to the PPP parliamentary leader in the NWFP Assembly, Abdul Akbar Khan, over telephone in the presence of Raza Rabbani, the party’s secretary-general, political secretary Naheed Khan, provincial president Khwaja Mohammad Khan and other party MPAs.

The spokesman said that Mr Zardari had also conveyed the directives to the MPAs through his emissary Dr Soomro.