ISLAMABAD: Pakistan People’s Party chief Bilawal Bhutto Zardari yesterday announced to start the much awaited reorganisation process from the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

The PPP will also carry reorganisation in Punjab and Azad Jammu Kashmir in the second phase followed by changes in Sindh and Balochistan.

Although, the PPP Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab chapters continue to work yet they have been told by the top leadership that new faces will be introduced soon to possibly replace them.

The reorganisation has long been overdue in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa where the party did badly in the 2013 polls and this year’s Local Governments elections.

The PPP was nowhere in the contest in the LG polls held in Islamabad and the provinces except Sindh. In the 2013 polls too, the party was confined to Sindh damaging its image of a national party.

Bilawal held a meeting with the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa chapter here to discuss the situation in the province. He had earlier held meetings with the leaders and activists from AJK.

After the meeting, senior PPP leader Qamar Zaman Kaira said the party leadership had decided to launch the reorganisation process from the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

He said the reorganisation was not province-specific as it would be done across the country. “There would be changes in Punjab and if needed, we will reorganise the party in AJK too,” he added.

Kaira said Bilawal held meetings with the representatives of the displaced people from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and urged the government to take immediate steps to facilitate them.

He said the PPP believed the federal and the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa governments had failed to provide adequate assistance to the homeless people.
He accused the federal government of pre-polls rigging in AJK to ensure victory of the ruling party in the state. Kaira said the federal government was releasing funds as the state moves closer to the polls in a bid to ‘buy votes.’

“This is a negative tactic but the PPP is a popular party and it will make a comeback. They cannot eliminate the PPP,” he asserted.

PPP leader Faisal Karim Kundi said the federal government must not take any step that may weaken the democratic system in the country. He said the pre-polls rigging in AJK will encourage wrong trends and the PPP had always been supportive of democracy.

Kundi said the reorganisation process was part of democracy and the PPP was optimistic about improved performance in the next general elections.
Meanwhile, PPP spokesman Senator Farhatullah Baber said Bilawal asked the PPP governments in Sindh and AJK to lift the decades-old ban on students union in academic institutions allowing the students to participate in healthy democratic activities in preparation for their future role in national politics. He also asked the two governments to make appropriate legislation and rules in this regard.

The PPP chief gave this call during his meeting with a delegation of the activists of Peoples Students Federation from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa that called on him in Zardari House.

Giving details of yesterday activities Senator Baber said the PSF was one of the six delegations that called on him as part of the PPP chairman’s political stock taking in the federal capital focusing on the party matters in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the Federally Administrated Tribal Areas.

The other party delegations who called on him earlier in the day included the lawyers, the youth, the labour, the minority and the women wing all of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa chapters.

Earlier, addressing the various wings of the party’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa chapter, Bilawal said the PPP was an ideological party and together “we will dispel the fears that the party was deviating from its ideological moorings.”

“Let me make it clear; the party’s ideology more than any individual will be the force to motivate, drive, lead and inspire the workers, the students, the peasants, the labour, the teachers and the general public,” he said.

He added, “Losing or winning an election does not matter as much as adherence to ideological principles does.”

The PPP chief said it was the party’s ideology that enabled it to fight the military dictatorship of Ziaul Haq and Pervez Musharraf and a civilian dictatorship wanting to become ‘ameerul momineen’ or the leader of the faithful – referring to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

“We must struggle for our cause and for our principles and we will,” Bilawal said.