PPP seeks PAT support: Wattoo says government resorts to pre-poll rigging in NA-137

President PPP Central Punjab Manzoor Ahmed Wattoo has said that the government has resorted to pre-poll rigging in NA-137 by initiating development projects, using official influence and indulging in excessive horse-trading. He was talking to media after meeting Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) leaders Raheeq Abbassi and Nawaz Gundapur on Wednesday at Minhaj-ul-Quran.
He visited PAT headquarter to seek support for PPP candidate Shah Jehan Bhatti contesting election as PPP nominee from NA-137. He observed that the real contest in the constituency was now between the PPP and the PML-N candidates because independent candidate Brigadier Ejaz Shah had been cut to size after a score of his important supporters ditched him on one pre-text or another.
Manzoor Wattoo demanded immediate announcement of schedule for the local bodies' elections. Doubts were flying thick and high that the government would never hold elections due to the fear of inevitable defeat. People would reject them for miserable failure to provide relief, he added. He supported the idea for evolving consensus among the opposition parties by the PAT leaders to amend Punjab Local Bodies Bill. All efforts of rulers to make the system subservient to them must be discourage, he asserted.
According to him, the PML-N rulers were characteristically averse of devolution and love concentration of power, as the incumbent CM of Punjab was keeping more than a dozen departments under his control and remaining one are being control by him through Secretaries to the utter frustration of the respective ministers. He also indicated that PPP and PAT would seriously consider contesting the local bodies' elections, if at all held, based on broader understanding of serving the people who had been relegated to the secondary position by that government.
He strongly urged the government to publish the report of the Judicial Commission on the Model Town incident in which more than 14 workers of PAT were killed by the police, adding those who were responsible for that criminal action should be punished to meet the demands of justice.