"Unfortunately, both Prime Minister Imran Khan and Prime Minister Raja Farooq Haider miserably failed to play the role that the freedom seeking Kashmiris had expected from them in the wake of India’s Aug 5, 2019 move… I am afraid they will play a dangerous game with regard to the Kashmir issue,” alleged PPP regional president Chaudhry Latif Akbar at a crowded press conference at his residence on Wednesday.
He was flanked by Sardar Mubarak Haider and Shaukat Javed Mir, party’s candidates respectively from Muzaffarabad city and Leepa valley.
According to Akbar, both governments had full realization that they could not win the upcoming AJK polls which was why they had been doling out public money to get the desired results.
"In 2016, the PML-N contested elections on the basis of tribes and deep pockets using funds of the AJK Council and in 2021 it’s giving schemes worth Rs 25 million in each constituency through the local government department,” he alleged.
After the announcement of the election schedule, such acts amount to a serious breach of the code of conduct and are thus unlawful, he said.
Following in the PML-N’s footsteps, Akbar alleged, the PTI government had also been contemplating spending around Rs 5 billion in AJK in its desperate efforts to win the forthcoming polls.
"Instead of conquering AJK, the PTI government should thwart India’s nefarious designs to further divide the occupied territory."
Akbar asserted that since the people had endured “abysmal performance of the incompetent PML-N and PTI governments" in AJK and Pakistan, nothing was going to go in their favour in the polls.
“In fact it's the PPP that will celebrate victory on July 25,” he vowed.
Akbar who could not return in the 2016 polls, admitted that the performance of the parliamentary opposition, of which the PPP was a major component, was not up to the mark over the past five years.
“Whether it was to highlight the issues of public interest or to take the [PML-N] government to task for unchecked favoritism and other corrupt practices, they did not fulfill their responsibilities to the satisfaction of the masses,” he said of the combined opposition in the assembly.
He made it clear that the PPP would not be part of any electoral alliance.
"We will shortly unveil our election manifesto that lays main emphasis among other things on success of the heroic struggle across the divide as well as improvement of service delivery in health, education and other sectors," he told a questioner.
Finding faults with the AJK Election Commission, he asked the constitutional body to take all contesting parties on board with regard to the polling schemes.
The commission should also withdraw its order to the National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra) “to stop issuing new identity cards to eligible persons, he said.
Akbar said army personnel should be deployed outside polling stations to maintain law and order but should have no concern with the proceedings inside the stations.
Of an all-party conference to be hosted by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday, the PPP leader said that pro India leaders had no right to represent IIOJK because the true representative of the occupied territory was the APHC.
Tariq Naqash
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