PESHAWAR, Dec 5: Pakistan People’s Party condemns political violence and believes that people will elect honest candidates.
Addressing a news conference at the press club here on Wednesday, Syed Ayub Shah, a PPP candidate for NA-1 (Peshawar-I), said the party believed in a peaceful struggle for restoration of democracy and transfer of power to elected people’s representatives, but elements banking on violence to sway poll results in their favour were enemies of democracy.
He was accompanied by Syed Zahir Ali Shah, PPP’s divisional president and nominee for PF-2, nominee for PF-1 Abdul Akbar Khan, Iqbal Mohmand and nominee for PF-3 Haji Manan.
He accused ANP leader Bashir Ahmed Bilour of being responsible for Sunday’s shooting incident outside a police station in which PPP activists were injured.
He said when Abdul Jabbar, brother of Iqbal Mohmand, a PPP candidate for PF-3, along with Wahab, Usman and others had gone to the police station to get Fiyyaz released, armed workers of ANP had fired on them, in which three of PPP workers had been injured.
He said the police had not arrested the people involved in firing on them. Instead, he said, it had facilitated them to seek pre-arrest bails.
He warned that the administration’s partisan attitude might generate more violence.
Mr Shah alleged that a “criminal group” had been exploiting the name of Bacha Khan, a peace-lover and exponent of non-violence, for their vested interest. He alleged that “this gang had killed Zahidul Hasan and Habibul Hasan, two PPP workers, in a bid to rig the elections.
The “same gang had tried to kill late Syed Qamar Abbas, but one of their own men had died in the incident.
This time, Mr Shah claimed, the group had fired upon Iqbal Mohmand’s brother and nephews to harass them.
Later, he said, they had attacked the residence of Manan Mohmand, a former provincial minister, and Iqbal Mohmand, in which a passer-by had been killed.
He said the PPP would not tolerate the hooliganism.
He said PPP had asked the ANP to get rid of the group, which had been acting against the party’s interests.
To a question, he said after coming into power PPP would reinstate deposed judges and remove all gangs on media.
SCCI ELECTION: Mohammad Asif was elected unopposed as president of the Sarhad Chamber of Commerce and Industry (SCCI).
Notifying results for the polls for 2007-08 term on Wednesday, the chamber also declared Inayat Khan and Mohammad Nawaz Khan elected unopposed as senior vice-president and vice-president by the 21-member executive committee of the province’s apex trade body.
The election for the chamber’s top slots was held on Nov 29, in which candidates backed by the Progressive Businessman Forum, led by Senator Ilyas Ahmad Bilour, outnumbered their opponents by a narrow margin.