GUJRAT: Some diehard PPP workers apprehend that despite expressing a firm resolve to reclaim Punjab, the party leadership was still in the company of those who were largely responsible for its routing in the most populated province of the country during the last election.

They were commenting on the meetings the PPP co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari was reportedly holding with the ‘party workers’ at Bilawal House in Lahore.

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Fakhar Mushtaq Pagganwala, whose family had a decades old association with the PPP, asked if all those former provincial and federal ministers and former lawmakers (who were surrounding Mr Zardari) were so good, efficient or devoted to the party’s cause and the public, why the party suffered its worst defeat in Punjab in 2013 polls.

He advised the PPP co chairman to also take out time and meet with the actual Jiyalas (diehards) instead of having a chit chat with the so-called workers being chosen by those encircling him at the Lahore’s Bilawal House.

The Pagganwalas have been part and parcel of the PPP since its foundation. Both Asghar Pagganwala and Mushtaq Pagganwala had been party’s district presidents (Mr Mushtaq had been in the office for 19 years). Fakhar Mushtaq Pagganwala had also served as the PPP’s district secretary general for five years till 2011, while his wife Sameena Pagganwala had been an MNA and parliamentary secretary in the party’s previous government.

A PPP district chapter office-bearer, on condition of anonymity, said once Gujrat had been the party’s stronghold but now it had been taken hostage by the Kairas since three of the family’s members were holding the party-offices -- Qamar Zaman Kaira (central information secretary), Tanveer Ashraf Kaira (Punjab secretary general) and Tahir Zaman Kaira (district president).

He said under Tahir Kaira, the PPP had been rendered dysfunctional in the district as neither he had been holding party meetings regularly nor activities like birth and death anniversaries of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and Benazir Bhutto were being marked for so many years. Similarly, he said, marking of the party’s foundation also seemed a tale from past. He said such activities kept political parties alive and workers’ morale high.

He deplored that the district president had gone to meet chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari in Lahore alone around two weeks ago, adding that workers were kept ignorant of such important events.

Former federal minister and PPP stalwart Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar has also been out of Gujrat since long as he had organised only two meetings with the local party workers after his election defeat. He has also closed his office in the city since then.

Another PPP leader, Nawabzada Ghazanfar Ali Gull, has also become dormant in the local politics. He is usually scene in the company of senior party leaders in Lahore or Islamabad. Most of his family members have joined the PML-N as his elder brother Nawabzada Mazhar Ali Khan and nephew Nawabzada Haider Mehdi were elected MNA and MPA, respectively, on PML-N tickets in the last elections. Mr Gull seems to be more concerned about his family’s politics in the constituency than that of the PPP.

“How Mr Zardari and his scion Bilawal can revive the PPP in Punjab if they do not develop a contact with the party workers at grass-roots level as both ZAB and his brave daughter Benzair Bhutto would never remain out of touch with ordinary workers which had always kept their spirits high,” said another local PPP diehard. He added that before launching a campaign for the next general elections, the party leadership must diagnose the actual causes of its decline in Punjab.

Published in Dawn, October 6th, 2014