ISLAMABAD: PPP Co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari has stressed the need for ensuring women’s participation in the by-election for a Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly seat in Upper Dir being held on Tuesday (today).

He directed the provincial and local leadership of PPP to make sure women came out in large numbers to cast their votes in the PK-93 constituency.

Mr Zardari, who has been living in Dubai for a couple months, said in a statement issued here on Monday that PPP believed in empowering women and had rejected efforts in the past to bar women from vote.

“Regardless of outcome of the by-election, tomorrow our sisters and daughters must not be deprived of their fundamental right to vote and express their political opinion without fear,” he said. “Let the by-election send a clear and loud message to all that the PPP rejects obscurantism and treating women as serfs or second class citizens. Whether someone likes it or not... let us send this message in an unambiguous manner.”

Mr Zardari warned against any possible manipulation of election results and asked PPP workers, independent observers and civil society members to keep an eye on the polling process.

He said PPP secretary general Raja Pervez Ashraf had sent a letter to the chief election commissioner and expressed the hope that the election would be held in a fair and transparent way.

Meanwhile, PPP spokesperson Senator Farhatullah Babar has said that the contest has turned out to be a straight fight between the provincial ruling coalition represented by the Jamaat-i-Islami candidate and the PPP’s candidate supported by opposition parties – Awami National Party, Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl and PML-N.

The winner of the 2013 election from this constituency belonging to the JI was de-seated after the PPP challenged his election on the grounds that he had a fake educational degree.

In his letter, Mr Ashraf expressed apprehension that the ruling coalition might “desperately seek to win the seat because of the urge to avenge the embarrassment of the de-seating of its MPA” and called for measures to prevent any manipulation in the polling process and election results.

Published in Dawn, September 15th, 2015

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