PPP to demonstrate its mass popularity in Karachi on Sunday: Ghani

Gearing up for the upcoming local government elections in Karachi, the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) has announced a march in the city on Sunday, January 8, from Bilawal House to Star Gate to show its political strength.

The announcement for the march was made on Friday by Sindh Labour and Human Resource Minister Saeed Ghani, who is also the Karachi president of the PPP, as he spoke at a press conference at the Sindh Assembly.

He said the PPP was serious about contesting the local government elections in Karachi and the next mayor of the city would be an activist of the PPP. He told the media that the party had fielded its candidates to contest the local government elections in Karachi on January 15 in all areas of the city except for just two union committees (UCs).

He maintained that the march to be held by the PPP on Sunday would be attended by its candidates, activists and supporters in large numbers in order demonstrate mass popularity of the party in the city.

He said that district chapters of the PPP in Karachi would also hold rallies and public meetings on a daily basis in different UCs in the run-up to the local government polls. Ghani explained that earlier in the day, a meeting of the PPP Karachi had finalised the party’s strategy for the local government polls.

To a question, the Karachi PPP president said the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) was tasked with the responsibility of holding the local government polls in the city and it was the ECP, not the Sindh government, that had carried out delimitation of the constituencies in the city.

He said the PPP and other political parties had objected to the delimitations in the city and the ECP had received a total of 307 complaints in this regard. The ECP accepted many of those objections but many other applications were also rejected, Ghani said.

He clarified that the Sindh government could not use its own will to defer the local government elections nor could it change the delimitations in the city as the authority for the same rested with the ECP.

To another question, he said it seemed to him that the local government polls would be held in Karachi on January 15 without any further delay. Responding to another query about the Jamaat-e-Islami’s rally in Karachi on Sunday, Ghani assured the media that the PPP would get in touch with the JI leadership to avoid any situation of possible clash.

He added that no clash had occurred in the past between the two parties. PPP Sindh General Secretary Waqar Mehdi said PPP candidates had been carrying out electioneering for the past seven months to contest the local government polls.

He recalled that the PPP had emerged victorious in three out of six cantonment boards in the last cantonment elections in the city and claimed that the next elected mayors of Karachi and Hyderabad would also belong to the PPP.