RAWALPINDI: A day before people from cantonment areas go to the polls to select those who will represent them on cantt boards, major political parties and their candidates turned up the heat on Thursday, holding rallies and public meetings across the garrison city.

But conspicuous by their absence were party leaders and political heavyweights, who had chosen to stay away from the canvassing due to the local nature of these polls, apart from the fact that campaigning by a public office holder would be against the Election Commission of Pakistan’s (ECP) code of conduct.

PTI Chairman Imran Khan was expected to visit Rawalpindi’s garrison area to support the party’s campaign on the last day of canvassing, but reportedly changed his plans on the advice of local party leaders who advised against it, seeing as no central leader from the PML-N had shown up to do the same.

“The party invited Imran Khan to be part of their election campaign in Rawalpindi and Lahore, but the programme changed when senior leaders stopped the chairman for campaigning for local government candidates,” a senior party leader told Dawn.

He said that being the elected MNA from NA-56 (Rawalpindi), other parties might object if Mr Khan came to campaign for his party’s candidates, adding that it was not the chairman’s place to involve himself in local-level politics.

PPP accuses PTI, PML-N of violating code of conduct

Echoing this view, PTI North Punjab General Secretary Zahid Kazmi told Dawn that even workers and local leaders had invited Mr Khan, an election campaign for the local level was “beneath his stature”.

A PTI was brought to Chaklala Cantt from the Naseerabad and Gulistan Colony areas. Mr Kazmi led the rally, while MPAs Arif Abbasi, Asif Mehmood and Ijaz Khan Jazi addressed different public meetings around the city.

Meanwhile, PML-N rallies, led by MNA Malik Abrar and MPA Malik Iftikhar, were taken out, while public meetings were held in different wards including Jhanda Chichi, Allahabad and Westridge. Senator Chaudhry Tanveer Ali Khan, a local PML-N heavyweight, was the biggest ruling party gun to address the public meeting.

Over the last week, the ruling party has been running a door-to-door campaign and focusing on corner meetings. Chaudhry Tanveer and Malik Abrar have also been quite busy canvassing support for their candidates.

“The party made Chaudhry Tanveer in-charge of local elections and there was no need to involve the main party leadership in these affairs,” Malik Abrar told Dawn.

He said the party’s local leadership was sufficiently equipped to deal with other parties and the main leadership would be invited to the garrison city after victory in the elections.

The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) also held rallies in Chaklala’s Ward 3 and Ward 5, which were led by Raja Imran Ashraf – the brother of former prime minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf. However, Zamrud Khan, the man in-charge of campaigning, was seen helping an independent candidate in Ward 1 of the Rawalpindi Cantonment Board (RCB).

PPP City Spokesperson Shujaat Haider Naqvi accused the PML-N and PTI of violating the ECP’s code of conduct by bringing out large rallies. According to him, parties were only allowed to hold corner meetings and public meetings that were confined to specific localities. “However, over the past couple of weeks, no authority took notice of the violations,” he said.

He said that PPP had invited several central leaders but they avoided attending the campaign adding that the party’s candidates were running their campaigns on their own.

The Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) did not invite any heavyweights either, but did run its election campaign through local mosques with the help of central leaders Liaquat Baloch and Farid Paracha.

People were invited for dars at their local mosques and in the end, speakers urged the people to vote for those candidates who were true Muslims and helpful to others.

Published in Dawn, April 24th, 2015

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