LAHORE, Feb 12: While Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari has welcomed the IRI survey as ‘success’ for his party, the Pakistan Muslim League-Q has rejected it and termed the report “alien to ground realities in Pakistan”.

PML-N chairman Raja Zafarul Haq said the report was ‘sponsored’ and aimed at building a particular kind of public opinion.

Mr Zardari said in a statement: “Now only large-scale rigging can stop the PPP from a sweeping victory in the upcoming polls.”

The IRI report says the PPP is the country’s most popular party and 75 per cent people want President Musharraf to quit.

PML-Q information-secretary Senator Tariq Azeem said that all opposition parties had dismissed as ‘baseless’ a previous IRI report which had found that President Musharraf was the most popular leader in the country. He said it was surprising that the opposition held a different view about the latest report of the same agency.

He agreed that the PPP was a popular party in Sindh and it had gained sympathy after the Dec 27 assassination of Benazir Bhutto. However, he said, popularity in one province did not mean that it would get the same kind of support in other provinces and added that the Muttahida Qaumi Movement was a force to be reckoned with in Sindh, but it could not think of a similar following in the NWFP or other federating units.

He claimed that the sympathy gained by the PPP in Sindh had been ‘neutralised’ by the statements of Mr Zardari.

Mr Azeem said the PML-Q would emerge as the largest party at the centre and in Punjab.