The two interconnected factions of peoples party — Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and Pakistan Peoples Party Parliamentarians (PPPP) — reportedly held their intra-party polls this weekend to elect everyone unopposed on their respective posts for a period of four years.

PPP-Parliamentarians elected former president Asif Ali Zardari as its president, while Bilawal-Bhutto Zardari was made chairman of the Pakistan Peoples Party.

The polls were organised at Bilawal House in Karachi with Farooq H. Naek convening the polling process for the Parliamentarians, while Fouzia Habib convened the process for the main faction.

Farhat ullah Babar was elected as Secretary General, Saleem Mandviwalla as Finance Secretary and Moula Bux Chandio as Secretary Information for the Parliamentarians.

Meanwhile, Nayyar Bukhari was elected as Secretary General, Haider Zaman Qureshi as Finance Secretary and Choudhary Manzoor Ahmed as Secretary Information for Pakistan Peoples Party.

The PPP had formed a separate entity, PPP-P, in August 2002 to meet the requirements of a decree issued by the then military ruler. A law was framed to bar Benazir Bhutto from holding a party office and the new political entity was a bid to avert the imminent threat of losing the chance of contesting the elections.

Former president Asif Ali Zardari and his son Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari are already set to contest by-elections for National Assembly seats from Sindh on separate election symbols.

Zardari is president of the PPP-Parliamentarians and Bilawal the patron-in-chief of Pakistan Peoples Party as per the list of political parties enlisted with the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP).

Under Section 5 (3) of the Political Parties Order 2002, a person cannot be a member of more than one political party at a time.

The PPP-P had been allotted the symbol of ‘arrow’ and the PPP ‘two swords’ by the ECP prior to the 2013 general elections. And now the two leaders are required to contest the polls from the platforms of their respective political parties under separate election symbols.