PESHAWAR, Aug 23: The electoral alliance between the People’s Party Parliamentarians (PPP) and the Awami National Party (ANP) at the Peshawar district level received a setback after PPP’s workers from different wards of the city revolted against the party’s decision.
Led by advocate Khurshid, an aspirant for the party’s ticket for National Assembly-1 (Peshawar-I), a number of the PPP workers announced here on Friday that the party’s provincial president Khawaja Mohammed Khan Hoti’s decision to form an election alliance with the ANP was not acceptable to them.
The dissenting PPP workers said they would not let the ground open for the ANP candidates. Terming the alliance between the two as “unnatural,” the splinter group leaders alleged that the PPP’s provincial leadership had betrayed the party’s long struggle against the pro-establishment forces.
“Now, we, the workers, would contest elections on every seat of the National Assembly and provincial assembly from Peshawar in reaction to the decision of the party’s provincial leadership to form an unnatural alliance with the ANP,” Khurshid said, adding that “through a conspiracy against the PPP, hatched by its provincial president, ANP has been allowed to establish its hold in Peshawar.”
Speaking at a crowded press conference, attended by a large number of party workers from different wards of party’s Peshawar district organization, Khurshid said Hoti formed election alliance with the ANP to get his son elected to the provincial assembly and to protect his own seat from Mardan.
The ANP has fielded Usman Bilour, son of senior ANP leader Bashir Ahmed Bilour, on NA-1 (Peshawar-I). Usman has been nominated after his uncle, Ghulam Ahmed Bilour, has been rendered ineligible to contest the elections due to the graduation condition.
As per the ANP-PPP deal, the former would support the later on NA-2 (Peshawar-II) and NA-3 (Peshawar-III) and the PPP would lend support to ANP’s candidates on NA-1 (Peshawar-I) and NA-4 (Peshawar-IV).
The PPP’s splinter group announced that it would field candidates only for those seats which had been allotted to ANP under the electoral understanding.
In this way, leaders of the group said, Khurshid would contest against Usman on NA-1 and, so far, they had decided to field Engineer Shakirullah on PF-5 (Peshawar-V), Misbah-ud-Din on PF-4 (Peshawar-IV), advocate Nauroz on PF-3 (Peshawar-III), Ashfaq Khalil on PF-6 (Peshawar- VI), Muhim Khan Afridi on PF-9 (Peshawar-IX), Farooq Shah on PF- 10 (Peshawar-X) and Masood Khan Mohmand on PF-11 (Peshawar-XI).