KARACHI, Oct 1: The Sindh Council of Pakistan People’s Party meets here on Thursday to discuss prevailing political situation at a time when its exiled leader Benazir Bhutto sounded conciliatory gestures towards the regime by proposing to work out yet another strategy for the exit of the military regime.
Rashid Rabbani, general secretary of PPP Sindh, said that while reviewing political situation in the country, particularly in the province, the meeting would also review the campaign, within and outside the assembly, against the Greater Thal Canal project as well as highhandedness of the regime in forcing opposition MPAs to change their loyalties.
The meeting would be attended by the party’s members of parliament and provincial assembly from Sindh, ticket-holders and provincial chiefs of subsidiary organizations. It would discuss organizational affairs besides matters pertaining to planned rallies, which apparently seem to be a distant cry.
The meeting is also expected to discuss the differences that emerged between the provincial president of the Party, Nisar Khuhro, and the Abbasi group over matters pertaining to local government and party offices in Larkana district and similar problems in other areas.
The party activists are perturbed over their exiled leader’s reported statement in Washington where she had offered to work out a compromise formula for providing indemnity to Gen Pervez Musharraf, if he also responded in the same way.
They are particularly perturbed over Ms Benazir Bhutto’s support to the proposed dispatch of Pakistani troops to Iraq where occupational troops have been coming under attack almost every day.
“What are we going to tell the people now who are opposed to any compromise with the military leader or sending of troops to Iraq, under any cover, to bail out the Americans? Why should we wash their dirty linen?” a disenchanted party activist remarked on condition of anonymity.
“Such compromises have failed us in mobilizing the people who have suffered at the hands of dictators,” he said adding that such statements “dampen the hopes for opposition’s success against dictatorship.”
PPP circles were least optimistic about the success of their planned rallies against the LFO from the platform of the ARD or anti-Greater Thal Canal Action Committee. Some senior activists feel that “compromises for personal gains will harm the party and one cannot rule out the possibility of more ‘Patriots’ sprouting.”