Former president says his party would not be part of agitation that could destabilise democratic govt
Pakistan People’s Party Co-Chairman Asif Zardari on Wednesday said his party would not be part of agitation that could destabilise the government.
“The party has very serious reservations about the May 2013 general elections and believes that invisible hands were at play to ensure pre-determined results, but it will not join any agitation or movement to upset the democratic structure,” he said while addressing a public meeting in Lower Dir in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa through a message that was read out on his behalf by his spokesman Farhatulalh Babar.
The event had been organised by the KP PPP to mark the first anniversary of party workers killed in a terrorist attack during an election campaign last year.
The former president said that the last year’s terrorist attacks on political rallies ahead of the elections were aimed at derailing the campaign of the PPP and to force its voters stay indoors. This was part of a larger sinister plan by invisible elements to engineer the poll results according to their own scheme, he said.
Despite obvious rigging and manipulation the party would not come on the roads to protest against rigged elections he said.
Zardari reminded that in the past also elections were manipulated against the PPP and democratic forces. In at least one such case of gerrymandering the involvement of invisible hands by doling out to anti PPP elements monies stolen from a bank has been recently established. However, the PPP has refrained from agitational politics because it does not want to derail the democratic process for which it has rendered huge sacrifices.
He said that the PPP was the only political party whose two successive chairpersons laid down their lives for the sake of democracy and the people. It is the only Party whose workers and leaders alike have made sacrifices for the cause of democracy and it will not allow the derailment of democratic process.
The PPP may feel wounded and aggrieved because of deliberate and dishonest tilting of the playing field against it in the past but it is not suffering from a defeatist mind because it believes that it cannot be defeated, he said.
The former President also on the occasion directed the PPP provincial president Khanzada Khan to urgently complete the organizational matters of the Party and hold more of similar events to galvanize and motivate the workers throughout the province.
It may be recalled that in Lower Dir terrorists had attacked PPP candidate Zamin Khan’s campaign in 2013 elections resulting in the martyrdom also of the candidate’s brother Zahir Shah and the event had been organised to mark the anniversary of those killed.
The public meeting attended by a large number of workers from Malakand and Dir was also addressed by KP PPP President Khanzada Khan, Senator Ahmed Hassan and a number of former federal and provincial ministers and lawmakers.
