LAHORE – The PPP is now worried about the rebels in the provincial Parliamentary Party, who deliberately denied the Senate vote to the party’s candidate, Mr Aslam Gill, and preferred to vote for the candidate of the Unification Bloc, Mr Mohsin Leghari.
The traumatized leaders and workers (by defeat of the party stalwart) want the black sheep to be detected at the earliest if the party has to prepare for the next general election and wanted to revive the morale of the workers.
The worried leaders — from the PPP-affiliated Governor Sardar Latif Khosa to the (PPP) Parliamentary Party leader in the Punjab Assembly Zulfiqar Ali Gondal to Deputy Parliamentary leader Shaukat Basra — have begun efforts to identify the rebels after pressure from the dejected workers is mounting on them to reach out the disloyal.
Punjab Governor has described them as traitors who betrayed with the blood of Benazir Bhutto while Gondal has approached the PPP Co-Chairman Asif Ali Zardari through a letter to seek a thoroughly probe into the matter if the party to be geared up for the next elections. He says the dissidents can cause major loss to the party in the time to come. Not that but PPP Deputy Parliamentary, Shaukat Basra while talking to TheNation, has pointed finger at Chief Minister Punjab Shahbaz Sharif for using money to win over the PPP MPAs to Mohsin’s side.
The Party workers blame the Opposition leader Raja Riaz for ill planning for the Senate election while he is giving justifying his position before them.
Sources claim that at the level of provincial leadership, a preliminary inquiry has been conducted into the matter wherein allegedly six MPAs close to Naheed Khan Group have been suspected of giving preferential vote to Mohsin.
In this flurry of pain and rage, Mr Gondal in consultation with Raja Riaz, has written to Asif Ali Zardari, to also examine the circumstances which led to MPAs in question to ‘mule (horse) trading’ side by side taking harsh disciplinary action against them after they are identified through inquiry by a high powered committee. He says the act of the treacherous MPAs has badly eroded the authority of the party leadership.
Regardless of what would be the outcome of the inquiry, the act of the dissident MPAs is a clear reaction to anything; from the party policies to the arbitrary decisions of the leadership and ignorance of the party die hard workers and leaders.
And if no prompt stock taking of the situation and ground facts is carried out, the party may pay a price in the next elections not only in Punjab but also in order provinces, said a senior party worker on the condition of not being named.