LAHORE, June 19: PPP activists and workers didn’t allow co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari to formally launch party secretary-general Jehangir Badr’s book, as they continued raising slogans in favour of leadership throughout the ceremony despite several requests by their leaders not to do so.

Hooliganism by them even forced the organisers to wind up the ceremony without giving half a dozen speakers a chance to express their views on Mr Badr’s book `The evolution of democracy’ at a packed Aiwan-i-Iqbal.

The Jiyalas, who had come from all over Punjab, allowed Pir Nazim Hussain Shah to recite some verses of the Holy Quran but restored to ‘Jiay Bhutto, Zinda hai Bibi Zinda hai, Bhutto dae naaray wajan gai, Sub tao bhari Zardari’, forcing South Asia Free Media Association secretary-general Imtiaz Alam to leave the rostrum without completing opening sentence of his speech.

Mr Badr said that the foreward of his book was written by Benazir Bhuttoo. “It is a book on Bibi Sahiba and I wanted her to perform its launching,” he maintained while thanking Mr Zardari for sparing time for the ceremony.

He also presented a resolution urging the government to declare June 21, the birthday of Benazir, Quaid-i-Jamhooriat Day and her martyrdom day on Dec 27 Shaheed-i-Jamhooriat Day.

The jiyalas were raising slogans in favour of the resolution when a tearful Naheed Khan, a confidant of Benazir, left the hall.

Asif Ali Zardari got a standing ovation from the audience when he took the rostrum and started leading the slogan raising workers.

After the speech of Mr Zardari, the ceremony was concluded abruptly, and the PPP co-chairman left the place without formally launching the book.