Tickets are being awarded without consulting party workers and district organisations, says protestors. DESIGN: EMA ANIS
Infuriated by party leadership’s decision in award of tickets, Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) jiyalas (activists) stormed the party office and smashed its window panes on Tuesday.
They also held a demonstration and burnt tyres on Liaqat Bagh Road blocking it for traffic for about an hour.
Led by Asad Pervez, Banaras Chaudhry, Sheikh Waqar Saeed, Jameel Nasir Qureshi, Mian Imran Hayat and other activists, the protesters were holding banners and chanting slogans against the party’s central leadership for ignoring sincere leaders who rendered “matchless sacrifices for the party.”
Tickets are being awarded without consulting party workers and district organisations, they said. “How can the central leadership ignore the district organisations in awarding tickets to aspirants for the forthcoming elections?” said Muhammad Mukhtar, a worker.
He said the central leadership has awarded a ticket to Israr Abbasi from NA-55 ignoring Sheikh Waqar Saeed who has been affiliated with the party for the last three decades.
Talking to The Express Tribune, Nasir Mir, a local leader, said the ‘London group’ who fled the country in 1996 after the PPP government was dissolved returned when the party came into power in 2008.
“They came here and started businesses and amassed money. They are now influencing the party leadership and awarding tickets to their blue-eyed colleagues, ignoring the sincere jiyalas,” he lamented.
Mir said some of supporters of the ‘London group’ are electioneering, pretending to be the contesters. These people want to create rifts among the party rank and file under a well-planned conspiracy, he added.
“The workers were holding a peaceful protest and we joined them to convey their grievances to the party leadership.”
He demanded that Faryal Talpur and Manzoor Ahmad Wattoo take notice of the situation and award tickets to sincere workers who remained committed to the party in times of crisis.
Those who ransacked the party office have no affiliation with the PPP and were agent provocateurs and part of a plot to create differences between workers and the central leadership, Mir claimed.
Published in The Express Tribune, April 3rd, 2013.
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