LAHORE: The PPP sees itself in the power corridors provided it manages to win National Assembly’s 65 general seats in the forthcoming general elections.

“If the party maintains its winning tally in Sindh, secures a couple of seats in Balochistan and four to five in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the rest of the score will be provided by south Punjab to reach the 65-seat figure and push the PPP into power corridors,” former governor Makhdoom Ahmed Mahmood stated.

The PPP bagged 35 out of 61 general seats in Sindh and three from south Punjab in the 2013 polls.

“Attaining the miraculous figure of 65 is not that difficult as the party is gradually regaining its glory in all parts of the country under the leadership of Benazir Bhutto-trained Bilawal Bhutto Zardari,” Mr Mahmood told Dawn here.

President of the PPP’s south Punjab chapter, he said the region comprised 12 districts of Seraiki belt with 53 National Assembly seats, and clutching 20 or so would not be an uphill task.

“With 65 seats in hand, none can dare ignore us in formation of a government as even the incumbent PML-N will prefer us over Imran Khan-led Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI).”

He claimed that the PPP was sailing satisfactorily, particularly in Muzaffargarh, Rahim Yar Khan, Bahawalpur, Layyah and other districts, as its organisational structure had been established down to tehsil level across south Punjab, while efforts were on to take it further down to union council level.

In Dera Ghazi Khan, the party had improved its position with the support of Khosas, but the districts of Khanewal, Lodhran, Vehari, etc needed some attention, he admitted.

Talking of the uncertain Punjab politics, he predicted that the PML-N would lose its grip the day the Sharifs were convicted in National Accountability Bureau references, and recalled how the situation in the case of Sardar Arif Nakai’s government had changed overnight in the mid-90s.

He chided PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif for, what he called, belittling state institutions, particularly the Supreme Court, through his “uncalled-for criticism”. The PPP leader was also critical of the PTI chairman for the latter’s policies regarding extremism and women.

“Had I been in the PTI I would have resigned four times – when Imran Khan offered Taliban to open their office in Peshawar, when he doled out public money to seminaries related to extremists, when he struck an alliance with an extremist (Maulana Sami’s JUI) party in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and when he married his spiritual leader,” Mr Mahmood alleged.

Published in Dawn, January 13th, 2018