Continuing dissent: PPP Nowshera chapter lobbies workers for intra-party ‘change’

Party leaders there say K-P president should be elected, not appointed .

NOWSHERA:

The leaders of Pakistan Peoples Party Nowshera chapter have stressed upon workers to participate in the convention on September 20. The convention is being held so workers can express their discontent with the direct nomination of PPP provincial president Khanzada Khan.

Rifts in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) chapter of the party widened when Khanzada was appointed as the K-P president after the party lost in the province in the May 2013 polls. Addressing a meeting of the workers at his residence on Sunday, former federal minister and PPP central leader Mian Muzzafar Shah said, “Appointing previous leaders on different seats of the party is a blatant injustice with other workers.” He added, “Being a democratic party, the PPP and its central leadership is bound to consider the workers’ wishes when appointing the office-bearers.”

Shah criticised the performance of PPP leaders in the previous government, calling it the reason why the party had no lawmaker from Punjab and K-P in National Assembly.

“We have no personal grudges with Khanzada, but he is not capable of handling PPP in K-P,” said Shah.

He said they were struggling to make the party stronger and all sincere leaders were backing this movement in K-P. Shah added PPP leaders in Punjab had also contacted them to better understand this movement.

Shah clarified the workers in the district had full confidence in the leadership of the PPP’s co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari, Bilawal Bhutto and other central leaders.

The party’s women wing president, Nigar Rauf, was also present at the meeting. She said the leadership should focus on reorganising the party in the province to address the concern of the workers and strengthen the working units. The leadership of the party must regain the workers’ confidence as they have been completely ignored in the party’s previous five-year rule, she said.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 16^th, 2014.a