Campaigning at gunpoint?: PPP says another party ‘intimidated’ its candidates

PPP candidates in Lyari allege that MQM has turned some of their voters into hostages.

KARACHI:

Pakistan Peoples Party’s (PPP) general election candidates in Lyari have alleged that Muttahida Qaumi Movement has turned some of their voters into hostages and banned their entry in Old City areas. They have requested the chief election commissioner and the chief justice of Pakistan take notice of the situation.

Addressing a press conference at Lyari’s football ground on Saturday, Abdul Aziz Memon, PPP’s candidate for NA-249, Javaid Nagori, Adnan Baloch and Saniya Naz, who have been awarded the party ticket for provincial assembly seats, and PPP’s district South president Haji Qasim, said that political activists have drawn guns on their supporters. They claimed that voters have been threatened and they themselves have been barred from campaigning in some of the city’s areas.

They said workers from the rival party have put up barricades in Paan Mandi, Kharadar, Mithadar, Solider Bazaar and other old city areas. He alleged that the same political party was killing its own workers and trying to pin the blame on other political groups.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 21^st, 2013.