February 05, 2008	Tuesday	Muharram 26, 1429

LAHORE, Feb 4: Pakistan People’s Party Co-chairman Asif Zardari will begin addressing public meetings in Punjab from Feb 14.

The first meeting will be held at Dhobi Ghat, Faisalabad, at 12 noon.

“The public meeting will be held even if the government fails to give security assurance to the PPP leadership as well as the public at large,” said PPP’s Punjab Information Secretary Farzana Raja at a news conference at the Lahore Press Club on Monday.

Accompanied by PPP’s Faisalabad division President Mahmoodul Hasan Dar, Abdul Qadir Shaheen and Iqbal Sialvi, Farzana Raja said the venue had been selected for Zardari’s first public meeting in Punjab because it was also the venue of the first PPP public meeting by Benazir Bhutto in 1979. She had also held her second largest public meeting in Faisalabad after Lahore in 1986.

The PPP leader said consultation was being made for more public meetings led by Zardari in Punjab.

Ms Raja said a Punjab PPP executive council meeting, held earlier in the day, expressed its concern over various crises in the country, saying the government was busy creating a new crisis by holding the general election in a rigged manner.

She claimed former chief minister Pervaiz Elahi had held a meeting with senior police officers and the civil administration, while district nazims were asking district coordination officers to hold meetings with Pervaiz Elahi. The nazims were also harassing known personalities in their respective districts.

She demanded that the Election Commission (EC) should order an inquiry into this matter. She said the EC should also explain why 1.8 million postal ballots had been printed and what the break-up of those ballots was. “It is a major step towards rigging,” she said.

She said most women polling stations in cities had been set up at far-off places.

Expressing concern over Mushahid Husain’s statement that Dr Qadeer will be released after elections, she asked whether he was in the government or the PML-Q was still running the government.

Stating that the PML-Q had four candidates for premiership — Sumera Malik, Khursheed Kasuri, Humayun Akhtar and Pervaiz Elahi — she said it would lose almost all its election candidates if it finalised its candidate for the slot.

UN probe: Naheed Khan, a Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) leader and political-secretary to the assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, has said the party will continue pressing for United Nations (UN) probe into the murder of PPP chairperson.

Addressing a public meeting here on Monday, she said the UN should probe into the assassination of Benazir as it was a tragedy of greater magnitude than the murder of former Lebanese prime minister Rafic Hariri.

She said the people would avenge the assassination of former prime minister by voting the PPP candidates to the assemblies and the party’s Central Executive Committee would take the decision about its candidate for the slot of prime minister after the general elections.

Senator Safdar Abbasi said Benazir had never deserted the people and sacrificed her life for restoration of democracy. The PPP had decided to participate in the general elections because it did not want to leave the field open for the cronies of the establishment.

PPP candidate for NA- 121 Aurangzeb Barki said Feb 18 would be the day of accountability.