Internews/Islamabad

Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) of slain former leader Benazir Bhutto has sped up efforts to reshape the party, formulating new manifesto.
Party sources said here Friday that the party has given powers to Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari to run the party as per philosophy of party founder Zulfikar Bhutto and Benazir Bhutto.
According to sources, a new manifesto of the PPP would be announced on November 30, on the founding day of the party.
They said approval for constitution of a committee of the party elders for this purpose has been made and it is expected that its members will be notified in the next few days.
Currently, the PPP and the PPP Parliamentarians run parallel as only parliamentarians of the PPP were member of the PPPP which was headed by Makhdoom Amin Fahim while main PPP is doing politics.
Now the PPP Parliamentarians Group would be merged in the PPP and the final announcement would be made after November 30. The sources said new faces would be introduced in the top hierarchy of the party and the chairman’s office would be made more powerful.
They said major changes would be introduced after local government elections in Punjab and Sindh. The party is expected to have a new secretary general after the local government elections, they said.
Aitzaz Ahsan and Qamar Kaira are top contenders for the post but a final decision would be made by Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, who has recently met with party workers in Islamabad and Lahore.
The workers have told him that they were being kept away from party affairs while irrelevant people were making all the decisions which has resulted in losses to the party in Punjab.
A senior leader of the PPP from Punjab says that he has serious reservations on continues interference in decision making process by irrelevant people which has affected the party in Punjab politically.
“The party has focused on the next general elections,” he said.
He said dynamics of local government is different from general elections as in the local government elections it was easy for sitting governments to manipulate the results into their favour but general elections will always be a different game.
“If we have to perform in the next elections then we have to perform politically in Punjab to attract the voters who expressed their annoyance with us in last general elections. We will come up with new team of clean faces and new political vision that attracts the youth,” he said.

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