PESHAWAR, March 20: The Pakistan People’s Party has termed the fresh delimitations made by the Election Commission all over the country a beginning of the pre-poll rigging by the government.

Speaking to newsmen at the end of the PPP provincial council meeting at the residence of Faiz Rasool in Gulbahar on Wednesday, PPP provincial chief Khwaja Mohammad Khan Hoti observed that the EC had failed to enrol the fresh voters.

The government was gerrymandering in various constituencies to get its henchmen and turncoats elected in the next elections, using delaying tactics in registering people as fresh voters and financing NGOs mafia to expedite depoliticisation of society, he added.

He said the government was trying to bunch the splinter groups, mainly the non-governmental organization operators, to field them against the PPP and the PML, both the national political parties. The NGOs were being promoted at the government level to replace the political organisations, he added.

The PPP, Hoti said, was a political party and it believed in negotiations and alliances with other political parties. It would certainly enter into alliances with political parties to foil the government design to bring some apolitical gangs into power, he added.

The nation was still paying for the wrongdoings of the late Gen Zia-ul-Haq.

Besides, the sectarian and ethnic terrorism, Zia introduced the kalashnikov and heroin culture in the country, he added.

He said everywhere the government had installed its factotums to secure ‘positive results’ as Zia had obtained in the past to strengthen his dictatorship. The partyless polls arranged by the late dictator destroyed the political culture and people were paying for his misdeeds even today, he added.

Mr Hoti alleged that the late dictator had promoted terrorism in the form of ethnic and sectarian killings merely to prolong his dictatorship. But his party, he recalled, opposed these ugly steps and, as a result, suffered during Zia’s dictatorship, he added.

He said the party provincial council had formed various committees, including a legal committee, to oppose and resist the illegal and unconstitutional measures of the military government.

The provincial council, Hoti said, also decided to observe the 23rd death anniversary of the late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, founding chairman of the PPP, all over the province.

He said Benazir Bhutto would be given a rousing welcome on her return to the country. Bhutto would lead the electioneering of the party, he added.

Flaying the statement of Gen Pervez Musharraf that Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif would not be allowed to take part in elections, he said Musharraf had no right to give a verdict against any politician.

The people of Pakistan were the best judge to give a verdict against anyone, he added.