LAHORE, June 14: PPP Secretary-General Jehangir Badr said on Tuesday that the local elections should be free, fair and transparent, and the official machinery should not be allowed to interfere in them.

Talking to reporters at a reception, he said any attempt to get the desired results would be a mistake which could never be rectified.

The reception was organized by the party’s Lahore information secretary Zakariya Butt. Punjab PPP President Qasim Zia, Altaf Qureshi, Naveed Chaudhry Munir Ahmed Khan, Haji Azizur Rehman Chan, Samiullah Khan and Sohail Malik were also present.

Badr said it would be decided by the ARD whether the alliance should put up its joint candidates in the local polls. Once the alliance took a decision, the PPP would frame its point of view keeping in sight the objective conditions.

He sidestepped a question whether free and fair local elections were possible in the presence of Gen Musharraf.

He termed premature a question whether Chairperson Benazir Bhutto and her husband, Asif Zardari, would appear before the Swiss court on July 13. However, he said, his party believed in the judicial process, and it had always followed this course despite the fact that it had to face hardships.

He did not agree with the opinion of Information Minister Shaikh Rashid that the future of the PPP was linked with the decision of the Swiss court. It was the people, he argued, who decided the fate of any party. He made it clear that his party would not compromise on principles.

Badr opposed the decision to privatize the PTCL. “The state institutions which are sensitive in nature or are earning profits should not be privatized,” he emphasized. He said the PPP during its first stint in 1988 had opposed the SNGPL privatization, and it was for this reason that the subsequent governments had not been able to do so.

The PPP leader also rejected the federal budget, terming it elitist.

He welcomed the APHC leaders’ visit to Pakistan, and said the Hurriyat leaders had praised the late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and his daughter, Benazir Bhutto, for their policy on Kashmir.

He said he was not aware if NSC Secretary-General Tariq Aziz had met Ms Bhutto or her husband in Dubai. He said as far as he knew, “for the time being” no talks were going on between the government and the PPP, although sometimes the dialogue process was on and sometimes it was off.