Lahore:
Pakistan People Party (PPP) sought on Saturday to press its advantage under the “ finalist formula ”, demanding seats of the National Assembly in Punjab for technical reasons despite not being finalists on most of them, learned The Express PK Press Club.
The president of the central PPP of Punjab and former Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf, as well as the secretary general of the PPP and former president of the Senate, Nayar Hussain Bukhari, addressed a joint press conference in Lahore with the senior leaders of the PML-N Hanif Abbasi, Federal Minister of Railways and Minister of Parliamentary Affairs Tariq Fazl Chaudhry.
Managers officially announced that the two parties had accepted a seat adjustment mechanism.
Under the arrangement, the party presented a candidate as a finalist would receive unconditional support from the other, they said.
L’Express PK Press Club had previously pointed out that the PPP refrain from presenting candidates against the PML-N and was rather based on the arrangement of “finalists”. However, discussions on history with PPP office carriers indicate that the party puts pressure on additional seats in Punjab by invoking “technical details”.
A PPP office office revealed that the party watched NA-1 (Chitral), NA-143 (Sahiwal), NA-175 (Muzaffargarh) and NA-185 (Dera Ghazi Khan). He argued that the PPP candidates had obtained more voices than their PML-N counterparts in these constituencies and therefore deserved the seats. “We asked these seats in PML-N,” he said.
When he supported the fact that PPP was not the finalist in any of these constituencies of Punjab, with the exception of Muzaffargarh, the source argued that their statement exceeded the PML-N in several cases.
However, control of the results tells a different story. For example, in Dera Ghazi Khan, the PML-N candidate had challenged as an independent and arrived second, while the Dost Muhammad Khosa of PPP finished third. In Sahiwal, the seat was left open for the Istehkam-E-Pakistan (IPP) party, where Nouman Ahmad Langrial challenged as IPP candidate, while the PPP finished a fifth distant.
“The rules of the finalists only apply when the PML-N candidate was not ahead of ours,” insisted the PPP source. Asked about PP-89 Faisalabad, which was also left open at the PPI, the source said that the party focused specifically on the four districts mentioned.
Meanwhile, a senior PPP official admitted that he had a limited knowledge of the latest developments, but said that his conversations with the central management suggest that in Punjab, the party could only realistically obtain NA-175.
PPP secretary general, Nayar Hussain Bukhari, addressing the Express PK Press Club, confirmed that the party had accepted the formula “in principle”.
Asked about the seats, PPP was looking for “technical terrains”, he replied: “We will hold discussions with PML-N on seats where such controversy would arise”.
Pressed later to find out if the terms had been finalized, Bukhari added: “These details would be developed later”.
