2015 a year of upheavals for PPP

LAHORE

Pakistan Peoples Party had to undergo testing times in the year 2015 when it faced challenges on different fronts, even in its base-camp Sindh, where Rangers operation multiplied its woes.

However, at the same time, the PPP success in Senate polls early this year where it retained the top slot of Chairman and its victory in local body polls in Sindh and a few districts of Punjab as well as Khyber Pakhtoonkha came as a respite for the party loyalists who were under immense stress in the years 2013 and 2014.

Starting from Sindh where the PPP government is in power, the issues of governance, tales of corruption once again made headlines and brought the Qaim Ali Shah government under immense criticism. However, what added insult to injury was the March 2015 incident when a model named Ayyan Ali was caught red handed from the Benazir Bhutto International Airport for carrying $0.5million.

Later, criticism of the PPP leadership increased when once a close aide of Zardari from Badin Dr Zulfiqar Mirza rebelled against Asif Ali Zardari.

With this, the beginning of Rangers special operation in Karachi and Sindh, the PPP government in the province came under further pressure after its name was attributed to land grabbers and extortionists. The PPP faced another testing time when Dr Asim Hussein, a close confidant of party co-chairman, who held important office in the last tenure of Peoples Party, was arrested by the Rangers. The relationship between the PML-N and PPP got severe at the end of this year over the issue of the Rangers powers in Sindh. The PPP led Sindh Assembly in the third week of December this year passed a resolution asking for checks on the special powers to Rangers.

The resolution stated that Rangers will have the only powers of raid and arrest with respect to target killing, sectarian killing, extortion and ransom kidnapping. Just a week later, rejecting the voice of the Sindh Assembly, Chaudhry Nisar, Federal Minister for Interior, refused to accept the summary for clipping the Rangers’ powers.

This led to a heated debate in and outside the parliament and both parties once again came at loggers heads. The PPP accused the central government of targeting it and called for an across the board accountability. Senator Saeed Ghani, a senior PPP leader while talking to The News, stated Ch Nisar had no constitutional powers to meddle into the affairs of the Sindh government. Under Article 147, it is the prerogative of the provincial government to decided about the powers of the Rangers.

The PPP leader Asif Ali Zardari also spent most of his time while staying outside the country and preferred to stay in Dubai in the year 2015 from where he handled the party and the Sindh governmnt’s affairs.

The PPP bigwigs from Sindh including Sharjeel Inam Memon, also a provincial minister, was amongst those whose name was put on the Exit Control List and he preferred to stay in Dubai.

This year, MQM, the former ally of the PPP in the last tenure, also remained under the cloud as most of the criminals caught in Karachi during the operations were said to have links with it. During the raids by the Rangers, which came to media by July this year, total 5,795 raids were conducted in which nearly 10,000 suspects including target killers were arrested and a large number of weapons, ammunition were recovered.

The raid over the MQM head office, recovery of arms, ammunition in large numbers was a major development related with the Sindh where the PPP has consecutively been in power since 2008.

The Rangers Operation not only exposed the PPP governance level in Sindh, but also opened a floodgate of criticism from different quarters to it. The speculations of Governor’s Rule also loomed over the Sindh throughout the year, however the Qaim Ali Shah government remained secure.

The PPP relationship with the PML-N, the ruling party in the centre, remained soar after the former felt being targeted by the Nawaz League over the issue of Rangers Operation in Karachi as well several other matters where Peoples Party leadership protested against the apathetic attitude of Islamabad towards the people of Sindh. Sindh lost a seasoned politician and a loyalist of slain party Chairperson Benazir Bhutto from Hala, Makhdum Amin Fahim who also breathed his last this year and his death was termed a great loss by his leadership. Amin Fahim was also a former President of he Pakistan Peoples Party Parliamentarians.  Senator Taj Haider, senior PPP leader from Sindh when contacted to comment on the performance of the Peoples Party government in the province, stated that the massive victory of the party in local body polls told the true story. He stated that in the district of Tharparkar, where the PPP government was alleged of serious poor governance resulting in deaths, drought, food scarcity, the same party won 47 out of total 53 Union Councils. He said the PPP government, besides taking measures to tackle food shortage, had also installed more that 700 Reverse Osmosis (RO) plants in the district to ensure clean drinking water supply to citizens.

He said that in other districts as well, the PPP candidates won the polls with big margins, although the result was still less what he had expected.

Taj Haider went on to say that over the tax collection as well, the PPP government in Sindh achieved its target and it was also trying to cover all the loopholes wherever they existed.

However, he stated that attitude of the PML-N government towards the people of Sindh and PPP government was really disappointing and there were multiple examples of it.

Senator Taj Haider stated that during last three months, the Sindh chief minister wrote three letters to the PML-N government for convening the meeting of the Council of Common Interest, but in vain. He said under the law, the meeting must be held within three months, but it has almost been a year that no attention had been paid towards it.

He said that for the last several months, there had been no work of the  National Finance Commission as due to the absence of only one member which Punjab has to nominate now, the meeting was not taking place.

Every province has two members in the board, which includes the sitting provincial finance minister and the general member. Taj Haider said that after previous general member from Punjab, Ayesha Ghous Pasha became the finance minister, the other slot of Punjab fell vacant. He said for the last several months, the PML-N government couldn’t even nominate a single member to fill that vacant slot and as a result, the entire commission couldn’t meet.

He also said that the annual budget of Sindh over Law and Order is around 65 billion whereas on health sector, it had allocated around 58 billion. Taj said the terrorism influx in Sindh was costing the Sindh government high which had to pay allowance and fuel to the security forces busy in the operation against extremists here.

He said the need of the hour was to target the hideouts of terrorists operating in Punjab which would not only purge the country of this menace and would also ease the economic burden on a smaller province like Sindh.

He said the Sindh government was facing an extra burden of Rs 2.5 billions due to the Rangers Operation, but there was no support from the PML-N government in centre which hadn’t paid a penny for the last two and a half years.

He also stated that two major industries in Sindh including Pakistan Steels and Export Promotion Zone were facing closure, resulting in unemployment, lack of production, causing a loss of billions of rupees annually to the province as well as Pakistan just because the PML-N government had suspended its gas supply. He said all these things were taking the country towards economic disaster, but the centre wasn’t ready to listen. This is noteworthy that in the local body polls, the PPP won from the most of the Sindh district, but what came as a setback to it was the defeat of its candidates from the districts of Badin, Sajawal and Thatta. From Badin, the group of Zulfiqar Mirza won most of the seats, though allegations of rigging were levelled from both sides.

The PPP opponents, on the other hand, holds the view that under its government, new precedents of corruption, crime and hijacking of public mandate were set. Former Chief Minister Sindh and PML-N member Dr Arbab Ghulam Rahim Khan, talking to The News, said there existed no law under the PPP rule in Sindh which was visible during the recent local body polls. He said Returning Officers and District Returning Officers manipulated the poll results in favour of the PPP. He said as far as the governance of the Sindh government was concerned, its more performance even worsened than the past.

When it comes to Punjab, the PPP performance witnessed no remarkable change in the year 2015 and it continued to face serious crisis in the province which was obvious in the recent local body polls.

Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, Chairman of the PPP, did visit Punjab this year, but he was unable to bring party back to streets and during his tour, he confined himself to the palatial Bilawal House of Lahore. In most of the districts of central Punjab, PPP faced a complete whitewash and couldn’t even find candidates who were willing to contest the LG polls on the symbol of arrow.

A slightly better result was seen in Lala Musa and Gujrat where the PPP ticket holders won whereas in Okara, hometown of party’s central Punjab commander Mian Manzoor Wattoo, the results were not different from the rest of the districts.

In Southern Punjab, the PPP succeeded in winning major chunk of seats from Rahimyar Khan, the district of Southern Punjab’s head Makhdum Ahmed Mehmood.

The exodus of party members to Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf also continued in 2015 and noted figures like former state minister Sumsam Bokhari, former provincial minister Ashraf Khan Sohna and former MPA Tahir Mehmood Hundli joined the PTI while bidding goodbye to the Peoples Party.

The PPP had a slight relief in KP where unexpectedly it had not only won a couple of seats in the Senate polls, but also won a major chunk of seats from two districts in the local body elections.

The PPP, quite unexpectedly, emerged victorious from a provincial seat vacated by Jamat-e-Islami Ameer Siraj ul Haq after he took oath as Senator. In the by polls held in Dir, the PPP candidate won from the vacant seat while emerging victorious over te PTI-JI backed candidate. There was no breakthrough for the PPP in Balochistan where in the local body polls held last year, it could win only two seats.