PPP apologises in advance for inconvenience due to public meeting

The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) is all set to hold a major public meeting on Friday (today) near the mausoleum of Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah to kick off the party’s countrywide mass contact campaign against the federal government.

The rally is being organised on the anniversary of the October 18 tragedy, which saw the homecoming rally of the then PPP chief and former prime minister Benazir Bhutto being bombed in the Karsaz area on Sharea Faisal in 2007.

The current PPP chief, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, will address the party’s public meeting today. A news conference was held on Thursday at the party’s reception camp at the meeting’s venue: the ground located near the VIP gate of the Mazar-e-Quaid.

Sindh Information Minister and PPP Karachi President Saeed Ghani told the media that all arrangements had been finalised for the party’s rally. He said a 60-feet-wide and 30-feet-high stage had been assembled for the meeting.

Ghani said the PPP had been doing its best to avoid congestion of vehicular traffic on the roads around the venue during the course of the public meeting. Though, he said, the public could face inconvenience to a certain extent due to the party’s public meeting for which he expressed regrets in advance.

He said that this time the party would not organise rallies from each of the districts of the city to reach the venue, as in the past vehicular traffic remained stuck whenever such a rally was being carried out in any of the district.

The minister said that instead, smaller processions from 42 different areas of the city would reach the venue of the public meeting, which would begin at 7pm. He said that earlier in the day leaders and activists of the party would pay a visit to the graves of those slain in the Karsaz tragedy and offer Fateha for them.

Ghani said that the mindset and group behind the October 18 incident had also orchestrated the tragedy of December 27 later that year (in which Benazir was assassinated in Rawalpindi).

He said the Karsaz tragedy did not carry only national importance but a global one as well, as that day the followers and activists of a peace-loving political party had been targeted by terrorists during a peaceful rally. He expressed concern that PPP candidate Jameel Soomro and his polling agents were being denied entry to the polling station during the by-election for the PS-11 Larkana constituency.

He also expressed concern over the reports that female voters at certain polling stations of the Larkana constituency were being pressurised into voting in favour of the candidate of the Grand Democratic Alliance instead of the PPP candidate. He claimed that the election commission’s conduct regarding the by-election was biased.