‘District chairman will be from PPP’

PPP leader says the party has support of 72 UC chairmen

RAHIM YAR KHAN: Former Punjab governor Makhdoom Syed Ahmad Mehmood on Sunday said Pakistan Peoples Party was quite good at the “local government game”. He said the party would thwart any attempts to steal its mandate.

He was talking to newsmen at the residence of Chaudhry Muhammad Shafiq of Chenab Group where he met with the newly elected chairmen, PPP office bearers and members of the chamber of commerce.

Mehmood said the Pakistan Peoples Party had attained support of 72 union council chairmen out of 139 in the house out of which 67 had been elected on the party’s platform. He said elections for 25 reserved seats elections would be held soon. He said the PPP was slated to take at least 18 seats. “The district chairman will be a PPP nominee,” he said.

He said the PPP-led local government would focus on elimination of corruption and bribery. “We want to end this culture of patronage encouraged by the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N),” he said. “The PPP is organised and ready to take on this challenge,” he said.

“The disarray in PML-N ranks can be gauged from the fact that they haven not reached a consensus over their candidate for district council chairman. PPP divisional coordinator Chaudhry Javed Iqbal Waraich and district president Javed Akbar Dhilloon said the PML-N leaders were blaming their defeat on Mianwali and were using Makhdoom Khusro Bakhtiar as a pawn.Meanwhile, former minister for external affairs Makhdoom Khusro Bakhtiar told newsmen that the PML-N would announce the name of the party’s candidate for district council chairman after meeting with the chief minister.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 21^st,  2015.