30 July 2004	Friday	12 Jamadi-us-Saani 1425

LAHORE, July 29: Alliance for Restoration of Democracy's (ARD) Punjab chapter has announced a schedule of its public meetings in connection with the election campaign of Dr Sikandar Hayat , the PPP nominee against Shaukat Aziz for the Aug 18 by-polls at NA-59 in Attock.

Briefing reporters after a hurriedly-convened meeting of the alliance here on Thursday, provincial president Qasim Zia said the ARD would hold first of its election meetings at Fateh Jang on Friday and the second at Hasan Abdal on Aug 9.

More meetings would be announced later on. He alleged that to rig the polls the government had posted the most corrupt SHOs at the five police stations in the constituency.

The Nazims of 25 union councils had been given Rs25 million each as development funds to attract votes for the ruling party candidate, he said. However, he added, the voters were conscious and they would not support an "import" and a "representative of an army general" in the election.

He demanded that the Election Commission should issue a list of presiding officers before polls to curb chances of results' engineering by bogus officials. He claimed that the alliance had framed its polling day strategy to check rigging, and its workers would watch each and every polling station while all central and provincial leaders would also reach the constituency to block any rigging attempt.

Mr Zia thanked the religious alliance, the MMA, for extending support to the ARD nominees at Attock and Tharparkar by-polls and promising to participate in the election campaign.

He said the ARD would welcome monitoring teams of the European Union and human rights and other organizations for the Aug 18 by-polls. Those present on the occasion included Munir Husain Gilani, Naubahar Shah, Saif-Allah Saif, Naveed Chaudhry, Nawaz Gondal and Mian Javed Latif.

It was for the first time that the PML-N attended an ARD meeting after an unannounced boycott of several earlier meetings in the wake of differences with the largest component of the alliance, the PPP, over by-polls in PP-156, Lahore, last month.