December 19, 2007	Wednesday	Zilhaj 8, 1428

PESHAWAR, Dec 18: The Pakistan Muslim League-Q (PML-Q) is unlikely to fare well in the NWFP and Fata because of its inability to find suitable candidates for many of the seats there.

The party, led in the province by former federal minister Amir Muqam, is contesting with the hollow claim of sweeping the elections on the basis of its performance in government. However, despite its five-year-rule the party has failed to field any candidate for dozens of seats.

Failing to find candidates for many of the National Assembly constituencies it has fielded just 18 candidates against 35 seats. And it has nominated only 64 candidates against the 99 seats of the provincial assembly.

The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) will vie for all the 35 NA seats of the NWFP and 12 of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas while 90 and 89 candidates respectively of the NWFP assembly.

The Awami National Party (ANP) has awarded tickets to 23 candidates for NA seats in NWFP, four for Fata and 75 for provincial assembly seats.

The PML-N has fielded 68 candidates for provincial assembly seats and some 20 for NA seats in the province. The PPP-Sherpao (PPP-S) awarded 52 tickets for NWFP assembly and 18 for the NA seats in the Frontier.

The PML-Q and PPP-S, ruling allies in the Shaukat Aziz government, have also failed so far to make an electoral alliance in the province with both of them fielding their separate candidates for the same constituencies in various cities. Both the parties have the weakest candidates in Peshawar.

The list of final candidates of PML-Q revealed that the party even failed to get candidates in those districts of the province where they claimed to have their own district nazims.

For instance, in Kohat the PML-Q has no candidates for NA-14 and for two provincial assembly seats PF-37 and PF-38 while in Swabi, another district with PML-Q district nazim, had no candidates for PF-31, PF-33 and PF-34.

Out of 24 districts the PML-Q has nine district nazims in the Frontier province.

In Hazara division, considered to be the stronghold of the PML-Q, the former ruling party has not fielded candidates on seven constituencies out of 20 provincial assembly seats there.

Other constituencies where the PML-Q has no candidates are: PF-3 Peshawar; PF-5 Peshawar; PF-15 Nowshera; PF-17 Charsadda; PF-20 Charsadda; PF-22 Charsadda; PF-24 Mardan; PF-30 Mardan; PF-39 Kohat; PF-42 Karak; PF-43 Abbottabad; PF-48 Abbottabad; PF-50 Haripur; PF-51 Haripur; PF-54 Mansehra; PF-55 Mansehra; PF-57 Mansehra; PF-62 Kohistan; PF-64 D I Khan; PF-67 D I Khan; PF-69 Tank; PF-70 Bannu; PF-71 Bannu; PF-72 Bannu; PF-73 Bannu; PF-77 Buner; PF-84 Swat as well as others.

As if this was no enough, their two candidates, Faisal Zaman and former provincial minister Habibullah Kundi were restrained from contesting polls because of their fake degrees.