KARACHI: As the Pakistan Peoples Party is going to contest the June 2 by-election on two provincial assembly seats, PS-106 (Azizabad) and PS-117 (PIB Colony), several party workers are not happy with the allotment of party tickets to Samad Baloch and Jawed Butt by MNA Faryal Talpur, who they say did not take their opinion into consideration, it emerged on Tuesday.

They believed that the selection of the candidates would not make much difference on the seats vacated by Muttahida Qaumi Movement dissidents Iftikhar Alam and Dr Sagheer Ahmed, who joined the Pak Sarzameen Party.

One worker added that their nomination was “not supported by everyone in the party”.

At the same time, the PPP is also trying to regain the confidence of its old guards by holding meetings with them in the city. Since the dissolution of all party organisations in April by PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, senior PPP leaders Nisar Khuhro and Maula Bux Chandio have been holding meetings with aggrieved party workers.

According to a source, three such meetings have taken place in the past two weeks in which one of the oft-repeated grievances of the workers was to “control or do away with the influence of PPP MNA Faryal Talpur”.

The first meeting was held at the office of Mr Khuhro, who is the senior minister for education and literacy, earlier this month.

During the meeting, the source added, senior party workers belonging to labour division, student wing and central district came straight to the point of “ensuring it to them that the same people tilted towards Faryal Talpur and her way of doing politics are not nominated again”.

Similar demands were repeated in the second meeting held at the Peoples Secretariat a week later.

The source added that the workers reminded senior party workers of the humiliating loss faced by the PPP in Malir during the 2013 general elections when Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz candidate Hakeem Baloch won a national assembly seat (NA-258) usually won by the PPP.

“Murtaza Baloch was removed at the behest of senior party leaders, including Faryal Talpur. Talpur’s name was also used to add weightage to their demands. The workers added that this might repeat itself in the coming month as well,” the source adds.

Even in the Dec 5 local government elections, PPP’s victory from one of the 51 union committees of Karachi’s district central (UC-21 Shahrah-i-Noor Jahan) surprised many. But party workers said that the win was possible “due to the alliance of PPP with Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (JUI), Jamaat-i-Islami and Sipah-i-Sahaba Pakistan.”

Things came to a head on May 12 when during a meeting at the Peoples Secretariat to remember the martyrs from various political parties, some workers lashed out at Talpur’s speech in Faisalabad on May 10 in which she mistakenly referred to Bilawal Bhutto as shaheed (martyr).

Defending Talpur, PPP leader Najmi Alam told Dawn that having a difference of opinion was part and parcel of every political party. “We do understand that there are differences but it is nothing that can’t be solved through communication.”

He said that the suspicions of the workers regarding the nomination of Samad Baloch and Jawed Butt were unfounded. “They are selected after consulting the party workers and keeping their opinions above everything else. These candidates were not selected by Faryal Talpur.”

At the same time, he added that the June 2 by-polls in PS-106 and PS-117 “are not the PPP’s focus as winning from Azizabad is not possible for us. But if we take even a good number of votes from there that would be good enough.”

He said that the PPP was largely focusing on and eyeing the by-polls to be eventually held for the provincial assembly seats PS-127 and PS-110, which had been vacated by MQM dissidents Ashfaq Mangi and Muhammad Dilawar after they joined the PSP.

Published in Dawn, May 18th, 2016