PPP, PML-N war of words after NA-249 by-poll

KARACHI: The Pakistan Peoples Party’s (PPP) Saeed Ghani on Sunday lamented that everything is fine when the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) wins, but if the PPP wins there are allegations of “deals”, while Rana Sanaullah said former has “no answer” for “stealing the NA-249 election”.

The minister’s news conference came a few days after the NA-249 by-election was held in Karachi, which PPP’s Qadir Mandokhail won by a narrow margin from PML-N’s Miftah Ismail. The PML-N leadership subsequently accused the PPP of “stealing” the election from the party. “The PML-N lost the NA-249 by-election owing to its own mismanagement and overconfidence,” said Ghani. He also questioned the PML-N’s premature celebrations even before the election was called.

The by-election marked a new low in the fraught relationship of the opposition PML-N and PPP, which recently parted ways from the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM).The minister advised the PML-N against taunting the PPP of “making a deal” to win the polls, adding that it was the PML-N itself that “had benefitted from such deals in the past”.

He recounted how former prime ministers Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Benazir Bhutto had lost their lives in Pakistan and former president Asif Ali Zardari had been jailed for years without ever being convicted.

The minister challenged the PML-N to “pull up a chart” and see which of the two parties, the PML-N or the PPP, had benefitted the most after the ‘80s. “If the elections cannot be won without striking a deal with the establishment, then the PML-N should tell us how it managed to win three elections?” he asked.

PML-N leader Rana Sanaullah reacted to Ghani’s remarks and said the PPP leader’s statement was a sign of “PPP’s panic” and was “a failed attempt to erase their humiliation”.

“Saeed Ghani: Don’t try to be Sheikh Rashid,” Sanaullah said, according to PML-N’s Twitter account. “Instead of replying to us, answer to the Election Commission,” Sanaullah said, adding that the PPP “considers us as rivals, we do not consider them as rivals and rivals”.

“Our goal is not PPP and Saeed Ghani, but to stop vote and election theft. Our goal is to get rid of the corrupt rulers who are inflicting the punishment of inflation on the people. Nawaz Sharif doesn’t need Saeed Ghani’s certificate for sacrifices for country and nation,” he added.

“Saeed Ghani and his party have no answer for stealing NA-249 election. They have no answer for artificially increasing the number of votes,” Rana Sanaullah said.