PESHAWAR: Keeping in view its poor performance in the cantonment boards elections the Pakistan Peoples Party is also likely to face a humiliating situation in the forthcoming Local Government elections in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa owing to its internal differences.

In the 11 cantonment boards of the province the party could secure only one seat of councillor in the recently-held elections which is next to nil for such a national level party and that it why PPP’s provincial secretary information Liaquat Shabab of Nowshera has resigned from his seat on moral ground to accept his failure.

PPP has been facing serious internal differences for the past several years since it had formed a coalition government with the Awami National Party in the province and a strong group of the party was against its own ministers for, what it said, ignoring workers and serving own interests at the cost of PPP’s future.

The annoyed activists have formed their own group which has constantly been demanding intra-party elections, but the leadership did not accept the demand so far and thus the workers formed a separate group across the province.

Two former PMs also fail to end grouping in party

The parallel group has affected the overall performance of the party which is very clear from the result of the cantonment boards’ elections where the annoyed activists contested the polls against the party ticket holders and thus the PPP voters stood divided.

Though the PPP is member of the tripartite alliance with Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl and ANP for the LG elections, the alliance does not seem to succeed in the prevailing situation. The leadership has also sensed the weakness of the party and thus tried to resolve the differences by holdings meetings with the leaders of all the groups, but failed to woo them.

Finally, a powerful delegation led by former prime ministers Raja Pervez Ashraf and Yousuf Raza Gilani visited Peshawar and held meetings with leaders of the relevant groups at the residence of former federal minister Arbab Alamgir on April 28 to reunite them, but failed to do so.

Sources privy to the meetings told Dawn on Thursday that the former PMs recorded statements of the provincial cabinet members and those of unhappy activists to apprise the central leadership of the situation so that a decisive step could be taken for restoration of the party’s past position in the province.

Sources said that the disgruntled group had fielded its own candidates in the LG elections and that could lead to defeat of the party’s official candidates. They said that if the differences were not removed the PPP would not be the largest party any longer.

They said that the delegation (former PMs) also got a very poor response from the unhappy people as they did not meet the central leaders. “Engineer Tariq Khattak, Ghani Gul Mehsud, Misbahuddin, Abdullah Yousufzai and some others met the delegation and repeated the demands for dissolving the provincial cabinet and holding intra-party elections,” the sources revealed.

They said that the PPP was not in the position to win the LG elections because the tripartite alliance was also ineffective in many districts and every party was facing revolt from own workers.

A provincial level office-bearer of PPP said that the party was at the mercy of Asif Ali Zardari and his sister Faryal Talpur who were least bothered to encourage the workers and discourage those hatching conspiracies against the party.

“We have been spending from our pockets and visiting different districts to reorganise the party but there is no encouragement for us,” the leader pleading anonymity said and hoped that the former PMs might convince Mr Zardari on taking any step for the party’s unity.

The source said that if the differences were not resolved the ultimate beneficiary in the LG elections would be the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf. He revealed that some of the provincial office-bearers might be replaced soon.

Syed Ayub Shah, one of the annoyed leaders, said that PPP would be unable to win the LG elections if differences were not resolved. “Sky will not fall down if the cabinet is replaced through intra-party elections,” he said.

When contacted, party’s provincial secretary information Liaquat Shabab said that he had resigned from his seat over defeat of his candidate in Nowshera cantonment board’s elections. “The basic reason of our defeat is the parallel grouping because the votes were divided due to the unhappy workers,” he admitted. However, he hoped that the former PMs would manage to resolve the intra-party differences in the province.

Published in Dawn, May 1st, 2015

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