On October 16, the Pakistan People’s Party displayed its street power in the country’s economic hub, Karachi, by organising a massive rally, titled ‘Salam Shuhada Rally’, to pay homage to activists killed in the bomb attack near Karsaz on October 18, 2007.

"The PPP would win the 2018 general polls in the country with the support of the people," said PPP’s young chairman, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, while addressing the rally.

Political analysts believe it was a symbolic start of the party’s preparation for the 2018 general elections.

According to the PPP leaders, the top brass of the party has been working on a multi-pronged strategy for the next general elections. Besides restructuring the party in the four provinces, Azad Jammu and Kashmir, and Gilgit Baltistan, and improving the governance of its provincial government in Sindh, the party has decided to adopt an aggressive outlook against the rival parties, especially Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) in Punjab and Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) in Karachi.

In Sindh at least, the PPP seems invincible as influential tribal chieftains and key leaders of rival parties have been joining the ruling party in rural parts in recent years.

Abdul Hakeem Baloch, PML-N MNA from Karachi and former state minister for communication, and Imtiaz Ahmed Shaikh, member of Sindh Assembly and provincial secretary general of the Pir Pagara-led Pakistan Muslim League-Functional, have resigned from their parties (and the parliament) and have joined the PPP. Both the leaders are contesting from their constituencies in the by-polls on the PPP ticket.

It will not be easy for the PPP to steal Karachi from the throes of the MQM. Out of a total of 20 National Assembly and 42 Sindh Assembly seats in Karachi, the PPP in the 2013 general elections could only win one and three respectively -- mainly from the Baloch and Sindhi-populated neighbourhoods.

Given the split within the MQM, the PPP leaders are hoping to win about 40 per cent of the seats from Karachi. On the directives of the party top brass, Chief Minister Sindh, Syed Murad Ali Shah, is especially focused on the developments in Karachi.

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On ground, though, the situation is still not in favour of the PPP. "The October 16 rally was indeed huge but it did not attract the mohajir community," says Hashim Askari, a political activist in Paposh Nagar area. "It supported the Jamaat-e-Islami and late Allama Shah Ahmed Noorani’s Jamiat Ulema-e-Pakistan till the formation of the MQM in 1987. Since then, it has always supported the MQM."

But the real challenge for Bilawal is to revive the party in rest of the country, especially Punjab, where the party has been wiped out because of several reasons -- provincial leadership crisis is one.

"PPP revival without Punjab is just a futile effort until Bilawal Bhutto Zardari mobilises Punjab. These rallies are just entertainment at best," tweeted former PPP federal minister, Shahzada Jamal Nazir, while commenting on October 16 rally in Karachi.

After the 2013 polls, the PTI emerged as an effective political party at the national level and in Punjab, attracting PPP votes as well as a few of its electables. Thus, the PPP is largely labelled as a party based in rural Sindh. The PPP leadership has been working hard to remove such tags, analysts say.

Even in its ongoing restructuring drive in Punjab, the PPP demanded that the party should rely on hardcore jiyalas whose political past is purely based on loyalty to the PPP, instead of selecting figures who joined the party from other political parties.

Qamar Zaman Kaira, former federal information minister, says the PPP is a federal political party and although it did not perform well in the past polls, its presence is felt across the country. "Re-structuring the party will help us win the upcoming polls. The party has faced bigger challenges in the past but it has the ability to overcome them."

Political analysts opine that a comeback of the PPP requires regaining some of its earlier support in the Punjab province. Raza Rumi, a political analyst, says the party, sadly, has not been able to re-organise its cadres and the party structures are in a transitional stage. "If the district and tehsil cadres are organised, there is a chance of winning some seats," says Rumi.

The real potential for the party is in South Punjab but the likelihood of winning in 2018 remains rather remote. "The best scenario for the party would be to retain its seats in Sindh, win a few in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and make alliances with Awami National Party to emerge as a formidable block. Regaining a majority won’t be possible in the short term," he says.

Similarly, the top leadership of PPP has failed to revive the party in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Fata, mainly because of deep-rooted differences in the party’s local ranks.

Engineer Humayun Khan, PPP KP member of coordination committee and former provincial finance minister, says that Bilawal will announce the names of new provincial leadership "as the coordination committee has handed over its recommendation to him".

"In KP, local residents are frustrated with the PTI’s performance and they have the choice to vote the PPP," says Khan.

He believes the PPP has a long list of achievements, "including renaming the province, NFC Awards, and good governance, which will force people to vote the party in again". He cited the examples of by-polls in Dir and Chitral where the PPP has won.

But things are not so simple for the PPP to regain lost ground in KP. "After Aftab Ahmed Sherpao, the PPP could not find a strong leader in KP," says Aziz Buneri, a Peshawar-based journalist. Former chief minister, Sherpao, left the party in 1999 and formed its own faction of the PPP, called the Qaumi Watan Party. "Today in KP, Sherpao’s party has more seats than the PPP," says Buneri.

Reports suggest the PPP is likely to form an alliance with the ANP in the upcoming polls against the rival parties, especially the PTI. However, the PPP leaders neither confirm nor deny it.

In Balochistan, the PPP, instead of depending on its organisational structure, depends on electable politicians who change their loyalties. Wali Khan, a Quetta-based political analyst, says because the PPP launched a military operation and a ban on the National Awami Party was imposed by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in the 1970s, the PPP does not get support from the Baloch and Pashtuns -- two dominant ethnicities living in the province.

"In the 2008 general polls, the PPP won seats and formed the government in Balochistan because key Baloch and Pashtun nationalist parties, especially Balochistan National Party and Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party, boycotted the polls on the call of the All Pakistan Democratic Front, a political alliance," he adds.

In the last polls, the PPP lost Azad Jammu Kashmir and Gilgit Baltistan to the PML-N. "In fact, our party does not have anything to offer our electorate, and also, because of media highlighting the party’s bad doings, especially in Sindh, it damaged us in the AJK polls," says a PPP leader who contested from the AJK region.

So, although Bilawal has been trying to inject a new life in the party, he has to face a number of challenges to revamp the party and stage a comeback in the upcoming polls.

Rumi says Bilawal mainly faces four key challenges. "First, the leadership at the national and provincial level. While Bilawal has become active, the public perception is that the party is still under the control of Asif Ali Zardari who is not popular with the Punjab electorate. Second, the PPP has to rebrand itself as an alternative to the PML-N. Its 1970s and 1980s programme is out of date given the high levels of urbanisation and structural change in the province. It needs a fresh agenda, one that resonates with urban, peri-urban, and rural voters alike. Third, the youth wing of the PPP is moribund. Given the huge number of young voters, the party needs to organise and mobilise them under an ideological manifesto that meets their aspirations," he maintains.

"Finally, the party would need to discard the old guard, especially those tainted by corruption charges and work on an image that makes it look serious on issues of corruption. It is not enough to raise Nawaz Sharif’s alleged corruption but to also ensure that the party cleanses itself of that image. It will be hard due to media’s traditional animosity towards the PPP but at least a start can be made," he adds.