The electoral scene in Sindh is getting more and more interesting. With the formation of an informal 10-party alliance, headed by Pir Pagara of the Pakistan Muslim League-Functional, that until last September was part of the PPP-led coalition in Sindh, the stage has been set for a ‘PPP vs the rest’ contest.
The electoral stakes are high for both sides. The most interesting aspect of the contest is that the three mainstream nationalist parties — the Qaumi Awami Tehreek (QAT), the Sindh Taraqqi-pasand Party (STP) and the Sindh United Party (SUP) — have embraced, in their quest for power, the very pirs, mirs and feudals they had been vociferously denouncing.
They have compromised the liberal and secular ethos they claim to possess after becoming part of an alliance which includes a variety of ultra religious and sectarian elements like the Sunni Tehreek, the Jamaat-i-Islami, the Jamiat Ulema-i-Pakistan and the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl.
The nationalists had, in fact, posed a challenge to the PPP much before the polls by forming the Sindh Progressive Nationalist Alliance (SPNA) after the 2008 elections, in an effort to reduce the PPP’s electoral base in Sindh. But this goal proved short-lived and the SPNA has disappeared into thin air now.
In the same spirit, the QAT and STP had been claiming to be the best alternative to the PPP, especially after a couple of successful strikes that came on the heels of a controversial local government law. But the PPP-led government, in order to maintain its hold over its voters, apparently outsmarted them by repealing the Local Government (LG) law a few months before completing its tenure.
The SPNA’s apparent demise is a reminder of the failure of the Sindh National Alliance (SNA) that was formed to oppose the influx of outsiders into Sindh, the establishment of cantonments, Kalabagh dam, etc. It failed to counter the PPP’s emergence as an electoral force in the late 1980s. Similarly, the SPNA was unable to overcome the challenges posed by egos at the level of its central leadership.
This was evident from the controversy that erupted over nominations for PS-47 (Qasimabad) as Dr Qadir Magsi and Ayaz Latif Palijo staked their separate claims. They ended up washing their dirty linen in public. While Dr Magsi’s withdrawal from the electoral race at the eleventh hour came as a pleasant surprise to Palijo, many saw it as a politically disturbing development.
They felt that as chairman of the STP Dr Magsi should have at least fought either from Thatta or on Qasimabad’s National Assembly seat.
“We failed strategically to make the SPNA a vibrant electoral force in pursuit of our parliamentary goals. It cannot be made practically functional and it will not be working in the future. It was with bona fide intentions that we joined the 10-party alliance to whitewash the PPP. But it doesn’t mean that our entire politics revolves around a provincial assembly seat; our ideology remains intact,” Dr Magsi told this writer recently.
He added: “The SPNA’s failure is attributable to our internal weaknesses and non-seriousness.”
Palijo disagrees with Dr Magsi and says that the SPNA is the basis of the 10-party alliance and today he, Dr Rajab Memon and Jalal Shah are joint candidates of this alliance. “The SPNA did not fail,” he says.
Jalal Shah’s (Sindh United Party) take is that the nationalist parties lack the capacity to understand the intricacies of mainstream parliamentary politics. “Our friends’ complexes and egos are damaging factors. I would say that our friends demonstrated too much political immaturity,” said Shah, who was the only one in the second generation of nationalists to return to the provincial assembly in his first elections in the 1997 polls, beating the PPP’s Abdullah Shah.
Meanwhile, the PPP is pulling up its socks for a tough contest. Constituencies of note where the electoral race will be interesting from the viewpoint of the nationalists are PS-47 (Qasimabad) where Ayaz Latif Palijo is up against the PPP’s Jam Khan Shoro, and Jalal Shah on PS-71 (Dadu-I) against Dr Sikander Shoro of the PPP.
The intra-party tussle for the award of tickets for certain seats has caused the PPP embarrassment. That such developments may cause upsets can’t be ruled out if past results in some PPP strongholds, eg Tando Allahyar and Matiari, are any yardstick.
The PPP is capitalising largely on its five-year performance that included 165,000 jobs for its supporters in Sindh, the Benazir Income Support Programme, and the substantial increase in the wheat support price.
“I feel pretty confident going to the polls, we got rid of the tactics of emotional blackmail employed by our opponents by repealing the LG law. We aren’t complacent as every vote counts,” argued PPP ideologue and chief of its election cell, Taj Haider. “We are ensuring that the Election Commission of Pakistan takes note of certain polling stations like PS-113 in Tharparkar where the turnout was more than 85 per cent in past polls.”
The PML-F, on the other hand, has undergone transformation by staging a huge gathering on Dec 14, 2012 though the rally had a predominantly spiritual colour to it, with the current Pir Pagara addressing it. With a new leadership face the party’s organisational base has spread across Sindh. It eyes 35 to 40 seats in Sindh barring Karachi.
According to its general secretary Imtiaz Sheikh the number will be even higher if the seats to be won by other members of the 10-party alliance are counted. “Don’t you see that our party structure has expanded significantly? You can’t compare it with the 2008 polls when a different vision was at work,” Sheikh remarked.
A senior nationalist leader and analyst Abdul Khaliq Junejo sums up Sindh’s electoral scene: “Our nationalist friends sacrificed their secular and nationalist goals only to reach the assembly and that too with the help of the very mirs, pirs and feudals they were opposing. They have failed strategically as the class that was fed up with the mirs, pirs and the PPP might have tilted towards the nationalists who opted to fight from the SPNA’s platform.”