PESHAWAR, Feb 14: The People’s Party Parliamentarians on Wednesday said it would not allow the government to repeat the rigging during general elections on the pattern of the mid-term polls recently held in Karachi and Jamshoro.

Addressing a news conference here at the Peshawar Press Club, PPP provincial president Rahimdad Khan said the rulers could not deceive the masses as well international bodies on the election issue. He said the manufactured success of government’s nominees in Sindh had exposed their future rigging plan. He said political forces would abort what he called the ugly designs of the rulers who, he said, were trying to depoliticise the country by installing their non-political puppets on the nation. The press conference had been organised to welcome Wing Commander (retd) Fardad Ali Shah into the party fold.

Criticising the federal and provincial governments for ignoring the people affected by recent rains in the NWFP, he said that despite the loss of life and property, the government had not yet paid any compensation to the affected families, adding that the provincial govt should urgently pay compensation.

Lamenting what he termed absence of government in the province, he said that criminals had taken over the streets and kidnapping for ransom had become a business. Mr Khan asked the government restore writ of the law or step down.

Welcoming new-comers in the party, he said that it was the success of party’s politics that political workers were joining it because of its manifesto. Mr Fardad Shah said the PPP had mass following, while other parties depended upon the establishment for political power.

He condemned the government’s lukewarm attitude towards the recovery of journalist Sohail Qalandar.