Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) has condemned the continued victimisation of party workers as "a planned and orchestrated pre-poll rigging" by hounding the activists to keep them away from elections.
Arrest warrants of a dozen PPP leaders, including six former MPAs, were issued in Karachi Saturday for allegedly creating law and order situation in the city after the murder of party's Sindh Information Secretary Munawar Suharwardy three years ago.
Former PPP MPAs Nisar Ahmed Khuro, Syed Qaim Ali Shah, Mazhar Marvi, Sassui Palejo, Mehreen Bhutto and Sharfunissa Leghari were declared absconders, their names ordered to published in the newspapers and the police directed to arrest them, said a statement issued by PPP co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari here on Sunday.
Simultaneously the police in Sindh registered cases against another over one hundred Party workers on charges of blocking Dadu-Larkana Road and burning tyres late on Friday night in protest against the arrest of Party workers, he added.
Using the blind FIRs as pretext the police raided houses of workers and misbehaved with the women folk, he said, adding that thousands of workers were previously nominated in criminal cases following disturbances in the wake of martyrdom of Benazir Bhutto.
"The registration of new cases and reopening of the several years old cases only to implicate Party leaders and workers was clearly designed to put pressure and disable them on the eve of elections", he added.
He said that under such circumstances when candidates and voters were subjected to intimidation and complaints against it remained unattended with a powerless Election Commission the elections would neither be free nor fair.
He demanded immediate release of the Party workers and withdrawal of false and fictitious cases against them as well as an end to the practice of registering blind FIRs for use against political workers at a later date.
The Party calls upon the international community to press Musharraf regime to desist from electoral manipulation by arresting and intimidating Party workers and candidates on fictitious charges just when the election was a few days away, he said.
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