PESHAWAR: Pakistan People’s Party is likely to name members of cabinet for its Khyber Pakhtunkhwa chapter after Eidul Azha as the coordination committee has almost completed its work.

The five-member coordination committee headed by PPP former provincial president Rahimdad Khan visited all districts of the province to get input from workers about the next office-bearers of the party in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Other members of the committee include Senator Robina Khalid, Noor Alam Khan, Eng Mohammad Humayun Khan and Shazi Khan. The committee was announced by PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari in April to resolve end internal differences in the party and unite the workers so that office-bearers could be named through consensus.

It was a difficult task for the committee as many of the old guards of PPP were asking the leadership to hold intra-party elections and empower the workers to elect their office-bearers.

Although the committee members avoided sharing details of the conclusion of the drive with media yet some senior workers opined that top leadership would pick a name from those proposed to it by the committee. There is no bar on the committee members to become office-bearers.

The names of Rahimdad Khan, Humayun Khan, Barrister Masood Kausar, Syed Zahir Ali Shah, Noor Alam Khan and Anwar Saifullah Khan are stated to be presented to the leadership for choosing one of them as next provincial president of the party.

However, a PPP leader said that Bilawal Bhutto was chairman of the party but final decision would be taken by his father Asif Ali Zardari. In the past, he said, Asif Zardari used to take JUI-F chief Maulana Fazalur Rehman and ANP president Asfandyar Wali Khan into confidence while taking decisions about selection of ministers [during his previous government] and provincial presidents of the party.

Another insider said that a meeting of the provincial leaders of PPP was held at the residence of Anwar Saifullah Khan recently wherein Syed Zahir Ali Shah presented the name of Anwar Saifullah for the slot of provincial president of the party but the participants of the meeting said that a senior ‘jiyala’ should be assigned the duty to lead the party in the province.

According to Rahimdad Khan, PPP leadership wants the workers to choose names for the slots of president, general secretary and information secretary of the party to make the selection process easy.

“We will apprise the leadership of the workers’ opinion to name anyone for any slot with its discretionary powers,” he said.

Similarly, Humayun Khan said that it was prerogative of the leadership to assign duties to workers. “We did whatever the leadership ordered us. Now it is up to PPP chairman Bilawar Bhutto to take final decision about selection of new office-bearers,” he said.

Mr Khan said that senior workers didn’t care for offices and slots as they were ready to extend cooperation to whoever was named for any seat. PPP’s future was bright because the activists realised to shun their differences for revival of the party’s glorious past under the leadership of Bilawal, he added.

PPP former provincial information secretary Syed Ayub Shah said that the struggle of ideological workers was to organise the party on democratic basis by empowering honest, dedicated and ideological people to remove the differences.

Published in Dawn September 13th, 2016