PPP deserters aim to get share in upcoming LG polls

ISLAMABAD: A predominant majority of deserters of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), who have switched over to the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), aim to get a share in the forthcoming local elections in their home areas in Punjab that they think they will not find if they remain associated with their present party.
More would-be and could-be turncoats of the PPP are in a hurry to move to the PTI, with the local polls just two months away. Not much time is left for them for decision about their final political destination. The Supreme Court had ordered simultaneous polls in Punjab and Sindh on September 20.
Not only these deserters but also every political leader is aware of the utmost importance and relevance of the local councils that would come in place as a result of these elections. They would be functioning and would have solidified their positions, when the next parliamentary polls are scheduled to be held in 2018.
The mayors, chairmen and councilors will be available to the political parties they would be affiliated with to conduct their election campaign. Any party having the maximum cardholders in the local councils will be in a better position to contest the general elections with their help because they would have the grassroots base to build on.
The local politics and district groupings, which always have primacy and precedence for every politician, do not allow the PPP deserters to defect to the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) as their area rivals, aligned with the ruling party, already occupy the space in their respective areas and would not permit comfortable adjustment and accommodation of the newcomers in the party.
The deserters are quite sure that they stand no chance to clinch anything noteworthy in the local councils if their local groups contested the upcoming polls from the platform of the PPP, which is at its lowest ebb, and opting for the PPP ticket in any election in the near future in Punjab will be inviting straight defeat. This perception has precipitated departures from the PPP.
The turncoats are also of the firm view that from amongst the available political parties, the PTI is the best option in terms of popularity. They feel encouraged by the hearty welcome they receive in the PTI, which has always been keen to get electables, regardless of their past in the political arena, in its fold.
On its part, the top PPP leadership is in a fix and lacks any innovation to come out of the present state of despair and despondency. Apparently, it doesn’t have any game plan to check defections of key figures.“It is a complex situation; we have to do a lot to stop the departures,” PPP spokesman Senator Farhatullah Babar told The News when approached for his version.
He said the senior party leadership was concerned about this situation and was devising plans to correct it. However, he said the arguments given by the deserters at the time of leaving the PPP were not convincing and weighty.
Unless a set of PPP leaders from Punjab throws aside its fixation of severely attacking the PML-N, considering it as their real rival, and persistently sparing the PTI and having a soft corner for it, there are little or no prospects that the plight of the party will improve even marginally in the majority province.
When the massive damage has been inflicted on their party, the stalwarts like Qamar Zaman Kaira, Nadim Afzal Chan and Raja Riaz still don’t realise that it is and it was the PTI that decimated the PPP in Punjab in the 2013 elections by taking away its vote-bank; and it was not the PML-N, which battered it significantly. They will continue to add to the woes of the party unless they get rid of the PML-N bashing phobia. They are so much beleaguered and cornered due to their rout at the hands of the PML-N in the previous polls that they are unable to see the ground reality correctly.
The Punjab is the centre of PPP defections whereas there is no such movement either from it or any other party in provinces. In all the by-elections held in Punjab after the 2013 polls, the PPP performance was very dismal while the PTI fared well, a fact that attracted several PPP leaders towards Imran Khan, persuading them to abandon their party.
Like before the PTI’s focus of campaign is Punjab where it is bracing up to contest the upcoming local polls in a big way. In its own style the PML-N is gearing up for the electoral fight. But the PPP, rocked by desertions, is yet to put its act together in Punjab while it will not face any major problem in the local polls in Sindh.