While sweeping changes are on the cards in PPP-P (Parliamentary), the top office-bearers of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) are safe and secure.
As such the party officials have denied reports that Sardar Latif Khosa, who is general secretary of PPP (not PPP-P) is being replaced in the reorganisational move that the outgoing president, Zardari, had promised on September 8 last during his visit to the city to mark the end of his tenure as president.
Sources in the party said that reason for wholesale shakeup in the PPP-P was simple and straight forward: former president Zardari believed it was PPP-P’s leadership that was responsible for the party’s electoral debacle in the last general elections. Hence, it was the PPP-P which had to bear the brunt of defeat, the president had made it clear in the party meetings recently.
Following the party’s rout in the Punjab and elsewhere in the country, the PPP-P’s top leadership has already tendered their resignations to Zardari or Bilawal Bhutoo one after the other. Prominent among them are Raja Pervez Ashraf, Yousuf Raza Gilani, Makhdoom Shahabuddin, Manzoor Wattoo and others.
The sources said that Zardari would bring in new faces on the slots which fell vacant besides other top offices on central and provincial levels while the top office-bearers of PPP would not be touched. The sources also discredited the reports of Latif Khosa’s sacking as general secretary of the PPP-P.
It is to be noted that under the political compulsion arising out of some changes in law by the then president Musharraf, the PPP, as a political party, is not registered with the Election Commission of Pakistan. Instead, it has been registered with the name of PPP-P with Amin Fahim as its president and Bilawal patron-in-chief.
Meanwhile, Aitzaz Ahsan is in the limelight in the PPP and is expected to get a lead role in the party reorganisation. Reports are there that he may get the top office of general secretary as a part of efforts to revive the party.
It is also in the air that Manzoor Wattoo is being replaced with some jiala or original PPP leader. Wattoo may get an advisory role in the reshuffle.
