Achakzai says lawmakers from other parties also voted for him

ISLAMABAD: Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC) backed Mahmood Khan Achakzai, after losing the presidential election to PPP co-Chairman Asif Zardari, termed the polls ‘fair’ and said lawmakers who were not backed by PTI also voted for him, ARY News reported on Saturday.

“The most unusual thing about this election was that the first time it has happened votes were neither bought nor sold,” Achakzai said while speaking to journalists in Islamabad after the polls.

He noted that some people in Pakistan think everything can be bought and sold, saying that there is a distinction growing between people who could be bought and those can be not.

The PkMAP Chairman further said that many lawmakers expressed their willingness for casting vote in his favour. “Even lawmakers, who were not backed by PTI, also voted for me,” he said, while expressing gratitude to the PTI leadership for their support.

Achakzai also warned about the ‘charged political environment’ in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP). “We have to bear and take care of each other. Why are we taking parliamentary problems being taken to court?” he added.

He noted that it would be better if the charged political environment could be controlled because the country was embroiled in myriad problems.

“We are small, but our problems are big. Our small mistakes will destroy everything, I request for the sake of the country that we have to sit together to resolve it,” he concluded.

It is pertinent to mention here that the coalition government’s candidate Asif Ali Zardari won the election for president with an overwhelming majority on Saturday.

Zardari became the only civilian president to be elected for a historic second time after bagging 411 votes from the electoral college, beating Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC) backed Mahmood Khan Achakzai.