PESHAWAR, Aug 31: The Pakistan People’s Party has criticized the military government for seeing to it that the nomination papers of its chairperson Benazir Bhutto were rejected, and termed it a vendetta of the rulers against a popular leader.

Talking to newsmen at Hoti House, Hayatabad, on Saturday, PPP provincial chief Khwaja Mohammad Khan Hoti said the action “depicts the anti-people attitude” of the rulers. Preventing Benazir Bhutto from contesting the polls was an act that had exposed the rulers’ claim of holding free and fair elections, he added.

The government, he said, wanted to create a dent in the ranks of the Alliance for Restoration of Democracy by allowing Nawaz Sharif to take part in the elections but rejecting the candidature of Benazir Bhutto. The ARD would foil all the “nefarious designs” of the military regime and continue to pursue its pro-people and pro-democracy agenda, he added.

By making discriminatory decisions, the government was trying to divide the masses on regional basis, which would engender hatred against the biggest federating unit, Hoti said.

The PPP would take up the matter of papers rejection before the superior judiciary to get her (Benazir’s) candidature restored.

The decision to bar Benazir Bhutto from elections would imperil the very existence of the federation, because her party was the “true champion” of the federation, he claimed.

Gen Pervez Musharraf had announced, much before the filing of nomination papers began, that he (Musharraf) would not allow Benazir to return to the country or contest the elections. It bespoke of the military rulers’ ill-intention towards the PPP, he added.

He said the rulers wanted to bring their hand-picked into the next assemblies by making electioneering complicated through a host of new election rules. The rulers were afraid of democracy, so they had decided to continue with the policy of applying curbs on political activities, he added.

He said even the government’s allies, like Imran Khan, were expressing a sort of no-trust in the performance of the government, he remarked.

Mr Hoti said the PPP was planning to launch a protest drive at district-level against the discriminatory and dictatorial stance of the government.

The government, he claimed, was conspiring to replay the 1985 elections’ drama, which resulted in the occupation of the parliament by nonentities.

He said the PPP-ANP alliance would sweep the elections in the NWFP and those who were opposed to this were not doing any service to the party. “We have taken notice of the childish behaviour being demonstrated by some angry workers,” he added.