LARKANA, March 28: The Abbasi family from Larkana, affiliated with the PPP since its beginning, will field three candidates for the approaching general elections, but all of them from separate platforms.

Munawar Ali Abbasi — son of PPP stalwart Dr Mrs Ashraf Abbasi who was the first woman deputy speaker of the National Assembly in the Bhutto era — will file his nomination papers on a PPP ticket for PS-38 (Larkana-IV), from where he has been a returning MPA.

However, his son, Moazzam Ali Abbasi, will contest general elections independently from NA-204 (Larkana-I) against PPP candidates because he was not awarded a PPP ticket.

Moazzam Ali Abbasi said that he would file his nomination papers on Friday. “I applied for a PPP ticket but was not awarded one,” he said while talking to Dawn on Thursday.

“This is why I have decided to contest against PPP candidates. My family has a track record of standing by the party through all ups and downs but it is the current leadership that has ignored us.”

In 2005 Moazzam Ali Abbasi had contested on a PPP ticket for the post of Larkana district nazim but had lost to PML-Q backed candidate Muhammed Bakhsh Arejo. However, he was confident that this time people of Larkana would remember the sacrifices made by his family and vote for him.

Meanwhile, Haji Munawar’s brother, former senator and a late Benazir Bhutto’s confidant, Dr Safdar Abbasi, obtained nomination forms for NA-205 (Larkana-Dokri). But whether he will contest from a PPP ticket remains undecided.

Talking to a group of journalists in Waleed on Thursday, Dr Safdar said he had almost finished consulting his friends and well-wishers and would make an announcement in a couple of days.

A vocal critic of the outgoing PPP government, Dr Safdar said that PPP’s flawed policies in the past five years had created a gulf of mistrust between the party’s leaders and workers, which at this juncture seemed quite difficult to bridge.

For PPP candidates, Dr Safdar foresaw unfavourable conditions in Punjab and trouble in Sindh. He said that the party would face a tough time in Punjab and might also lose many seats there.

He said that PPP candidates would not have satisfactory answers when people, during the election campaign, would ask them about arresting Benazir Bhutto’s killers, controversial Sindh Peoples Local Government Act 2012, inflation, unemployment and terrorism.

The former senator said that a new breed of candidates would emerge in Sindh, in the wake of refusal by the PPP to award tickets to many candidates. They would file nomination papers against PPP candidates, he said, referring to his nephew’s case.

He said that unfortunately, instead of handling party matters politically and in line with the PPP manifesto and guidelines, the PPP was being managed like a personal affair where the worker, who was the actual fountain of strength, came as the last priority by those in high ranks.