PESHAWAR: PPP central leadership has called the party’s senior leaders from different cities to Karachi to discuss its reorganisation, selection of new office-bearers and preparations for launching a possible protest movement against the PML-N central government.

A PPP senior leader told Dawn here on Friday that the party Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari had formed coordination committees for announcing names of office-bearers for various districts as all the party’s cabinets had been dissolved.

The coordination committees have been directed to present reports to the chairman about the party’s internal rifts and announce names of new office-bearers with consensus.

When contacted, a member of the coordination committee told Dawn on condition of anonymity that intra-party elections were the main demand of the workers, but said it was not possible in the prevailing situation because it would consume time and might cause further polarisation among workers during the polls campaign.

The committee member said party leadership would be requested to announce names of the office-bearers on its own and the workers would accept the decision because the new team was to do a lot of work in the shortest possible time.

“We will suggest to the leadership that people with clean past should be named as new office-bearers who could tolerate criticism of workers,” the source said and added people involved in any kind of scandals should not hold offices at provincial level as PPP was going to launch a ‘movement against corruption’.

Meanwhile, former PPP provincial president Rahimdad Khan has urged the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government to stop harassment of Afghan refugees as they were ‘our brothers and sisters’.

In a statement here on Friday, he said Afghans had been in Pakistan under an international agreement and had the right to live with honour.

He said Islam and local traditions did not allow the government to arrest the Afghans as they were ‘our guests’.

Published in Dawn, July 2nd, 2016