Reeling from a recent exodus of “electables” and senior members from its ranks, the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) of former president Asif Zardari appears to be in a quandary over finding suitable candidates to field from Punjab in the July 25 general elections.
Sources in the party said that since a large number of PPP bigwigs had joined the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), the PPP leadership in the province had the tough task of nominating new candidates, especially from central Punjab.
Even though former ruling Pakistan Muslim League – Nawaz (PML-N) has yet to announce its candidates from any province, the PPP had taken a lead and announced its election hopefuls for the National Assembly and the Provincial Assemblies of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), Sindh, and Baluchistan.
The PPP leadership’s decision to withhold the announcement of candidates from Punjab has exposed its past failures of re-organising the party in the province at the right time.
Taking advantage of the situation, a large number of second- and third-tier PPP workers and leaders have, this time around, applied for party tickets.
However, the leadership is perturbed by the fact that most of these applicants do not have enough experience even with local government elections.
Besides this, most of these ticket aspirants do not have the funds required to run their campaign.
Only recently, former president Zardari had claimed that his party would take over the whole of Punjab in the general elections as he had decided to enter the election battlefield with his son Bilawal Bhutto and daughters Bakhtawar and Aseefa.
However, it is interesting to note that neither Zardari nor Bilawal have filed papers from any constituency in Punjab.
“There is no doubt that the PTI has dented the party severely in Punjab,” a senior PPP member from Lahore said.
“You see, the party has suffered a lot due to the departure of people like Nadeem Afzal Chan, Nazar Gondal, Murtaza Satti, Imtiaz Safdar Warraich, Samsam Bokhari, Nawabzada Ghazanfar Gul, and Ashraf Sohna,” he added.
The PPP leader was of the view that in the past too, many big names like Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi, Aftab Sherpao, and Farooq Leghari had ditched the party, but at the time the party had remained intact and strong due to the charismatic leadership of Benazir Bhutto.
“This charisma is no doubt missing in the party,” he said.
He went on: “Most of these had joined the PTI not in the love for Imran Khan or his party.
“They took this extreme decision when they lost all hope of seeing things get better in the party, realising that the PPP is getting weaker and weaker with every passing day.”
Sources in the PPP say the party leadership delayed the award of party tickets in hopes that dissidents from the PML-N and the PTI may approach them.
“Yes, we hope that some of those who are presently fighting for tickets of the PML-N and the PTI may contact us once the two parties settle their internal disputes,” said a PPP office-bearer, privy to developments with regard to the ticket-awarding process.
He said that in the past, there had been a few PPP members who had quit the party but had not been awarded tickets by the PML-N or the PTI.
However, he said, the party was divided on the issue of allowing those members back into the party.
“A large number of party members are of the view that such people should not be accepted back to the party (even if the party could lose the elections),” he added.
Interestingly though, publicly the PPP leadership have been claiming that the party has been unable to finalise its list of its candidates from Punjab because of a large number of applicants in almost every constituency.
PPP secretary general Farhatullah Babar claimed that they had received more than 2,500 applications and there were more than three aspirants per constituency, in a number of areas.
Similarly, PPP Punjab secretary general Chaudhry Manzoor Ahmed claimed that the party had strong candidates in many Punjab constituencies.
He rejected the speculation that they did not have the required number of candidates.
Ahmed, however, admitted that they withheld the announcement of party candidates with the hope that they could be contacted by disgruntled leaders of other parties.
He expressed hope that the party might announce its Punjab candidates in two phases in the coming days.
GULF TIMES
