20 August 2004	Friday	03 Rajab 1425

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ISLAMABAD, Aug 19: The Pakistan Muslim League-N is unhappy with the way the People's Party Parliamentarians (PPP) conducted the campaign for ARD candidates in the by-election for the National Assembly seats in Attock and Tharparkar, PML-N sources told Dawn here.

When asked why did the main PML-N leaders not take part in the election campaign of the ARD candidate, Dr Sikandar Hayat, against Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz in Attock, a senior office-bearer of the party said the PPP leadership had not invited PML-N leaders to attend any public meeting.

"They (the PPP leaders) thought that they could alone run the campaign and did not need the support of any other party," he said. To a question why the PML-N leaders themselves did not took the initiative as the party was part of the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy (ARD), he said as the alliance candidate belonged to the PPP, therefore, it was the host and it should have invited the PML-N leaders. Not only the PML-N, he said, the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) was also not invited to take part in the election campaign.

He further said though several prominent PPP leaders attended the public meetings in Attock, the party president and ARD chairman Makhdoom Amin Fahim did not go there for campaigning the alliance's candidate. "Why should then Raja Zafarul Haq (the PML-N chairman) and Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan go to Attock?," he added.

However, he said, despite all this the local leadership of the PML-N had fully participated in the election campaign of Dr Sikandar Hayat. "Our local leaders like Sheikh Aftab, Malik Sohail and others took part in several public meetings, arranged by the PPP in Attock," he said.

The PML-N leader, however, dispelled the impression that there was any danger to the existence of the ARD due to this attitude of the PPP. Both parties, he said, were together on a common agenda of "restoration of genuine democracy" in the country.

The PPP and the PML-N had announced joint candidates in Attock and Tharparkar after a long discussion and only after the direct intervention of the exiled leaders of the two parties.