Pakistan People’s Party Parliamentarians (PPPP) president Asif Ali Zardari has made it clear that his party (Pakistan People’s Party) is not willing to rule out an electoral alliance with Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), claiming that the government that will emerge as a result of the upcoming general elections will be a “unity government” or a broad-based coalition government.
In my view, he appears to be spot on, given some latest developments that have added to the richness of country’s political landscape. One of these is of course the return of Nawaz Sharif from the UK where he spent four years in self-imposed exile.
There’s no denying that a seemingly elderly Nawaz, the Quaid of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and former three-time elected prime minister, appears to be working harder, so to speak, to brighten his party’s electoral prospects, through whirlwind tours, focusing on Balochistan, KPK and Punjab.
Zardari’s reluctance to reach out to or embrace PTI perhaps stems from the fact that real or perceived restrictions or constraints that the Imran Khan-led party has been facing could adversely affect alliance partner’s own electoral prospects in Punjab and KPK where Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) will be the principal challenger to any political party in the election fray.
While Zardari, who is widely known for his enviable political astuteness, appears to be quite confident about PPP’s performance across Sindh, including Karachi, he’s eyed the remaining three provinces to grab as many as National Assembly seats to add to what his party had won in Sindh in the 2018 general elections.
It is important to note that Sindh has 61 NA seats and majority of them had been consistently grabbed by PPP since the 2008 general elections in particular.
Equally beleaguered PTI and Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) have certainly provided Zardari with a golden opportunity to improve upon the last tally of NA and provincial assembly seats.
However, PML-N would find it extremely difficult to secure even simple majority unless it is able to recoup most of the space that it had conceded to PTI in Punjab and KPK in the 2018 general elections. So the task of Zardari appears to be less challenging than Nawaz Sharif’s.
Insofar as PTI is concerned, there can be no informed analysis about how it would fare in the general elections in view of the enormity of challenges it has been facing since May. Holding intraparty elections within 20 days to retain its election symbol bat while the top leadership is still in jail is a development that has surely added to party’s woes, to say the least.
Hikmatullah (Karachi)
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023
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