Zardari reviews PPP plans for local government polls
* Former president addresses PPP Khyber Pakhtunkhwah members
January 12, 2014, , Source
ISLAMABAD: Former president and Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari on Saturday chaired a meeting to review organisational matters of the PPP, discuss strategy about the forthcoming local government (LG) polls and outline the party’s policies on issues confronting the nation.
Office bearers and leaders of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa chapter of PPP attended themeeting at Zardari House.
Spokesperson to the former president Senator Farhatullah Babar said that Zardari emphasised on vigorous campaigning for LG polls to retrieve the ground that the party was made to lose in the last general elections through “calculated manoeuvring”.
The former president said that “despite obvious manipulations in the May 2013 elections”, the party accepted its results so that democracy continued to flourish and non-democratic forces did not get an opportunity to derail the entire system. He said that politicians infighting had in the past provided an excuse to the undemocratic forces to intervene and hijack political power. This must not be allowed to happen, he added.
The former president also paid tributes to the party workers and other democratic workers who have sacrificed in the fight against militancy, saying, “Their sacrifices will not go in vain.”
Zardari also paid tributes to a Hangu school student, Aitzaz Hassan, who was martyred while confronting a suicide bomber.
Describing Aitzaz Hassan “national hero” in the fight against militancy, Zardari said that young Aitizaz had willingly sacrificed his life to save the lives of hundreds of his schoolfellows.
“Aitzaz’s supreme sacrifice will help correct the distortion introduced in the debate by some parties about the fight against militants and religious fanatics,” he said.
Zardari said that the PPP was the “party of martyrs” and it would give a tough fight to the extremists and militants. Nowhere in the world had two successive chairpersons of a party laid down their lives for the cause as had been done by the PPP, he added.
About LG polls, the former president advised party workers that whatever arrangements were made it must be based on broad based consultations within the party and keeping in view the principles for which the party had sacrificed so much.
The former president asked party leaders to keep an eye on the privatisation policies of the government and raise voice against “crony capitalism”, lack of transparency and sacking of workers from jobs. The party must not permit any policy that threw out of jobs the labour and the working class, he said.
Zardari also advised the party cadres to give attention to the membership drive as well as completing the party’s organisations at various tiers.
He also directed PPP Secretary General Raja Pervez Ashraf and Raza Rabbani to visit Khyber Pakhtunkhwa for on ground meetings with party workers to ascertain theirviews on one hand and address their grievances on the other.
The 50-member delegation of PPP leaders led by Khanzada Khan included Anwar Saifullah Khan, Arbab Alamgir Khan, Humayun Khan, Liaquat Shabab, Najmuddin Khan, Lal Khan and Tariq Khattak.