ISLAMABAD: The PPP has formed a committee to look into the causes of the party’s poor performance and embarrassing defeat in the recently held by-elections in Punjab and local government elections in two other provinces.

This was disclosed by Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly Khurshid Ahmed Shah at a press conference after a party meeting held here on Wednesday on the issue of Fata reforms.

Senior PPP leaders Chaudhry Aitzaz Ahsan, Farhatullah Khan Babar, Qamar Zaman Kaira, Sherry Rehman, Nadeem Afzal Chan and Akhunzada Chatan are members of the committee which will submit its report to PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari next month.

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Accompanied by Farhatullah Babar and Akhunzada Chatan, Mr Shah said that in the light of the report, the PPP chairman would announce a new strategy in his speech on the party’s foundation day on Nov 30.

The PPP had suffered defeat in the local government elections in cantonment areas for the first time, besides meeting a similar fate in the local bodies’ elections in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

There has been resentment within the party circles, particularly in Punjab, over the PPP’s poor performance in all the elections. There is a group within the party which blames the present Punjab leadership for the defeats. The group also believes that the leadership’s reconciliation policy caused huge damage to the party and people now generally consider Imran Khan’s PTI as the real opposition in the country.

In the Oct 11 by-elections for two National Assembly constituencies in Lahore and Okara and one Punjab Assembly seat in Lahore, the main contest remained between the PML-N and the PTI and the PPP was nowhere in the contest. The PPP’s pathetic performance can be gauged from the fact that all its candidates got their security bonds confiscated by the Election Commission.

At the press conference, Farhatullah Babar said PPP Co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari had written a letter to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif seeking his cooperation in bringing reforms in the terrorism-hit Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

He said Mr Zardari had made the prime minister realised that no political party could single-handedly bring the required constitution amendments for reforms in Fata, which were part of the manifestos of both parties.

The PPP senator said the constitution was needed to be amended to extend the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court and high courts to Fata.

Earlier, the PPP leaders at their meeting discussed and reviewed the progress on the party’s proposed reforms in Fata.

Published in Dawn, October 15th , 2015

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