KARACHI: PPP demands caretaker set up for elections
By Our Reporter
KARACHI, Oct 21: Secretary General of the PPP, Sindh, Nafees Siddiqui on Saturday said that the general elections next year would usher in a new phase of people’s democratic rule in the country.
Addressing party workers in Baldia, he said a caretaker set up must be there to oversee the elections to be conducted by an independent election commission because holding of free and fair elections under Gen Musharraf’s dispensation was not at all possible.
Prominent PPP leaders Afaq Shahid, Qadir Patel, Abdul Ghaffar Patni and Saeed Ghani also addressed the gathering.
He said that the PPP would contest the elections along with other liberal democratic parties within and outside the ARD. He said that only people would decide who should be the next prime minister, and hoped that masses would choose Ms Benazir Bhutto as the next prime minister for the third stint because he believed that it was only Ms Bhutto who could lead the country out of the current difficulties.
Mr Siddiqui, who later left for a foreign visit, also complained about pre-election rigging by ruling coalition partners, alleging that they were getting their voters enlisted and keeping the opposition voters out. He further alleged they were entering names of their voters from their majority areas into the list of those constituencies where they had less or no support.
The PPP leader demanded that the voters’ lists of 2002 election be retained after updating the same. He was also concerned over the rapidly deteriorating law and other situation in the province and, in this context, referred to the unprecedented rise in street crime.
Pre-poll rigging: PPP leader and Coordinator of its Karachi Coordination Committee Atfab Shaaban Mirani has accused the government of indulging in pre-poll rigging in Shikarpur by-election, claiming that many relatives and henchmen of the ‘king’s party candidate’ had been posted in police and education departments to influence the poll results, adds PPI.
Mr Mirani said that the chief election commissioner’s order that no official be transferred in that constituency had grossly been violated.
