ISLAMABAD: A meeting of the Central Executive Committee of the Pakistan Peoples Party last week was supposed to be a chance for the party to do some soul-searching and pull itself together after back-to-back defeats in the local bodies elections in cantonment areas, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Gilgit-Baltistan.

June 17 was also the day when the party was expected to discuss plans for reorganisation in Punjab, where the party has been quite weak as of late.

However, the blowback from Co-Chairman Asif Ali Zardari’s hard-hitting speech a day earlier overshadowed the originally-decided agenda for the day. Party insiders told Dawn the CEC meeting mainly discussed the pros and cons of Mr Zardari’s speech, where he targeted the military establishment for “pushing the PPP against the wall”.

In follow-up interactions with the media, PPP Information Secretary Qamar Zaman Kaira and Vice President Sherry Rehman attempted to play down Mr Zardari’s remarks, arguing that only one portion of the speech was highlighted by the media. But their deflection hinted at a wider strategy; that the PPP was looking to take the heat off Mr Zardari.

According to the original plan, both the co-chairman and his son Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari were to head to Lahore after the CEC meeting to oversee party reorganisation. However, both have by now left the country.

PPP co-chairman laughed off a proposal to replace Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah with Bilawal

Explaining the context of the developments, a senior party office-bearer said, “After Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s refusal to meet the party co-chairman, the PPP leadership had to rethink its future course of action, which was why the Punjab plan has been deferred for the moment.”

Bilawal’s false start?

Following the CEC meeting, a number of key ‘decisions’ were leaked to the press, chief among which was the suggestion to bring Bilawal to parliament and make him leader of the opposition. It was also reported that incumbent opposition leader Khursheed Shah may be given the post of Sindh chief minister.

However, in background discussions since then, many PPP leaders have admitted that these two suggestions were not taken seriously by the party leadership.

“Yes, some leaders did suggest Bilawal’s entry into parliament. But the party leadership didn’t respond in so many words,” Nadeem Afzal Chan, a key PPP leader from Punjab, told Dawn.

According to another insider, Mr Zardari was asked what was the harm in bringing in Bilawal to replace the octogenarian Qaim Ali Shah as Sindh CM, as it would also send out a positive signal. However, he reportedly laughed off the proposal.

The source also said that talk of Bilawal replacing Khursheed Shah in the National Assembly was just an off-the-cuff remark made by someone during the party meeting in Islamabad and wasn’t actually discussed during the leadership’s week-long stay in Islamabad.

In the same meeting, Akhunzada Chattan, the former PPP MNA from Fata, was reprimanded after he joked that the Sindh CM’s propensity to sleep was bringing a bad name to the party. Mr Zardari told him off, saying that young office-bearers should respect senior leaders.

Former PMs call it quits?

Also, there were reports that former prime ministers Yousuf Raza Gilani and Raja Pervez Ashraf had resigned as vice president and general secretary of the party, respectively. However, the resignations had more to do with the party reorganisation that Bilawal was mulling than anything else.

“Although no formal request was made to the two senior-most party office-bearers, reports attributed to Bilawal indicated that he wasn’t happy with the party’s current organisational structure, which might have led them to resign,” a PPP senator told Dawn.

Both men had said they wanted to give the party chairman a free hand to reorganise the party. “I have been active in party politics for decades, and now I think the time has come for the younger generation to take control,” Mr Ashraf was quoted as having said during the meeting. Similar remarks were attributed to Mr Gilani, who reportedly said: “I don’t want Bilawal to shoulder the burden of the old party hands in his efforts to rejuvenate the PPP.”

Divided house

Within the party itself, there is more than one school of thought when it comes to Mr Zardari’s anti-military tirade.

For those from the party’s Punjab chapter, a hard-hitting response was essential to revitalising the party in that province, which has been the traditional bastion of power for any party ruling at the centre. But for leaders hailing from Sindh, where the party’s government is in its second consecutive term, Mr Zardari went too far.

The party has entered one of the critical phases in its recent history and can only survive by taking an active role in politics, which will of course involve occasional bumping into the powers-that-be, said PPP leaders in off-the-record discussions with Dawn.

“The co-chairman has only highlighted existing ground realities about prevailing civil-military relations in the country. I am surprised by the reaction to Mr Zardari’s speech in the media,” said Mr Chan.

A PPP office-bearer from Sindh, however, said the co-chairman probably faltered in his selection of words. Unlike the other provinces, top-level postings and transfers have to be routed through the provincial apex committee, which has a significant military presence in the shape of the Rangers director-general and the corps commander.

Published in Dawn, June 26th, 2015

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