Nawaz says will look into PPP’s offer for seat adjustment
By M. Sadaqat
HARIPUR, Dec 13: Former prime minister and PML-N leader Nawaz Sharif has said PPP chairperson Benazir Bhutto’s offer for seat adjustment with his party will be considered after taking into account if it will benefit both the parties.
He was talking to journalists after presiding over a meeting of the party’s central parliamentary board at Shataloo Sharif in Sirikot here on Thursday.
Former NWFP chief minister Sardar Mehtab Ahmed Khan, provincial PML-N chief Pir Sabir Shah, Saranjam Khan, Capt (retd) Mohammad Safdar, Iqbal Zafar Jhagra, Abdul Subhan Khan and other party leaders attended the meeting.
Mr Sharif said that his party had devised a mechanism to prevent rigging in the election. Party workers, he said, would monitor the process, from polling to counting, at every polling station and would thwart attempts to change results.
The parliamentary board interviewed aspirants for party tickets for constituencies in the NWFP and selected candidates for 24 of the 43 National Assembly seats in the province.
Candidates for the remaining constituencies would be selected by the party’s parliamentary committee comprising Sabir Shah, Sardar Mehtab and Iqbal Zafar Jhagra.
Later, addressing a public meeting, he said the January 8 election was a referendum between those who “had killed innocent people from Khyber to Karachi” at the behest of foreign powers and democratic forces which had been struggling for democracy, supremacy of the Constitution, independence of the judiciary and freedom of the press.