October 18, 2007	Thursday	Shawwal 5, 1428

MULTAN, Oct 17: Though the government has given free hand to the Pakistan People’s Party to take its workers to Karachi to welcome its chairperson Benazir Bhutto on Thursday (today), the party’s district chapter here has miserably failed to attract a sizeable number of workers to its road show starting Wednesday.

Being the largest city of southern Punjab and native city of provincial president Shah Mehmood Qureshi and other party bigwigs, political circles were predicting that PPP workers would participate in the reception in a large number but the number of buses and vehicle constituting the caravans leaving Multan for Karachi were far less in number than expected.

Major leaders including Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Syed Yousaf Raza Gilani, Bushra Naqvi and Salahuddin Dogar preferred reaching Karachi by air instead of leading their party workers from the front and virtually leaving them in a lurch.

MPA Dr Javed Siddiqi said he was travelling with a caravan of five buses while four buses had joined their caravan from Lodhran, two from Jalalpur Pirwala and one from Larr.

The buses led by Mr Siddiqi are arranged one each by himself, Yousaf Raza Gillani, Salahuddin Dogar, Amir Dogar, Raja Abdul Ghaffar, Mirza Nasir, Amir Ghani and Ayub Ghallo.

According to sources, the party leadership had directed all aspirants for party tickets for the forthcoming general elections to arrange at least one bus and five other vehicles to carry workers to Karachi and also bear their boarding and lodging expenses.

There are six national and thirteen provincial seats falling in Multan district precincts and number of desiring candidates is not less than two for the each slot.

Thus, there are around 40 candidates for party tickets from this district but the number of busses travelling to Karachi is only around a dozen. Only one bus is going to Karachi from the National Assembly constituency of Mr Qureshi, while aspirants for party tickets for provincial assembly seats falling under Mr Qureshi’s constituency, Dr Akhtar Malik and Mazhar Abbas Raan, have also arranged one bus each for the caravan. Many candidates are said to have failed to gather the workers or arrange for their transportation.

Local leaders including city president Khurshid Khan, Arshad Iqbal Bhutta, Syeda Jamal Labar, Saleemur Rehman Mayo, M Saleem Raja, Begam Zubaida Khokhar, Shama Awan and Begam BA Jigar have moved to Karachi with their few companions by road and trains while Muazama Hasnain is travelling with a caravan from Lahore.

Party sources claim that a large number of workers and leaders have moved to Karachi, however the visible road show speaks volume of the failure of these tall claims.