HYDERABAD: PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari has posted a video on his Twitter account about the alleged rigging after PPP lost the re-poll in Larkana — its bastion of electoral power ever since its birth — for a second time in a row to Moazzam Abbasi, a nephew of former PPP stalwart Dr Safdar Abbasi.

“This video has also been brought to my notice. I’m asking the party to investigate and will then follow up with the ECP and relevant authorities,” said the party chairman in his tweet. “We will challenge this rigging at every forum. The truth can’t be hidden. We will expose this selection. We will have a re-election and take back this seat,” said another tweet.

PPP’s losing candidate, Jamil Soomro, who is the party chairman’s political secretary, is a resident of Larkana and hails from the same constituency.

Factors like choice of candidate and bad governance since 2008 in Sindh are being attributed to PPP’s loss in Larkana. “The choice of candidate can go either way,” said a noted PPP politician from Sindh. But another leader had a different view, saying Jamil Soomro was a new face thus he was a proper choice apparently as the electorate did not have any complaint against him, which was not the case with the party’s old faces in Larkana.

Moazzam Abbasi was de-seated by the apex court for not fully declaring his assets. He did not mention a 68-acre piece of land in his nomination form filed in the 2018 polls. The losing candidate, Nida Khuhro, had filed an appeal against his eligibility to contest the election on this ground.

“Our votes have rather increased in this constituency as PPP bagged 5,000 to 5,500 more votes when compared with the previous election in this constituency,” argued a Karachi-based leading light of PPP.

Top PPP leadership had taken the re-election quite seriously which is evident from Bilawal’s electioneering for Soomro hence inviting ECP’s ire for violating the code of conduct. So, the results must have been a disturbing phenomenon for him and he would certainly be going for an overall audit of party’s performance.

“PPP got purely an administrative-driven vote in Larkana which is quite reflective from the pattern of its election campaign. There is a big anti-Zardari coalition in Larkana and there [are] a variety of factors,” said Dr Safdar Abbasi, who heads the PPP-Workers and supports the Grand Democratic Alliance, Larkana Awami Ittehad (LAI) etc.

“This change will now travel beyond Larkana in my humble view. You may visit Larkana and see for yourself the pathetic civic conditions prevailing here,” Abbasi lamented.

Published in Dawn, October 19th, 2019