ISLAMABAD: All the central office-bearers of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), including its chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, have been “re-elected” for another four-year term without having any contest.

The intra-party elections at the federal level were held in Karachi on Wednesday (Jan 6) “in accordance with Constitution of the PPP and the country’s Elections Act 2017” and election commissioner Fauzia Habib announced the results, said an announcement by the party’s media office here on Thursday.

Besides Mr Bhutto-Zardari, Syed Nayyer Hussain Bukhari has been elected unopposed as the PPP secretary general, Faisal Karim Kundi as secretary information and Rukhsana Bungash as secretary finance.

Talking to Dawn, PPP secretary general Nayyar Bukhari said that since they had been elected in January 2017, the intra-party elections had become due under Article 208 of the party’s constitution after completion of the four-year term.

Party forms body for filing corruption reference against govt functionaries

Mr Bukhari refuted the impression that the party elections had been kept a secret, saying the process had been completed strictly in accordance with the party’s constitution and rules. He declared the intra-party elections as an internal matter of the party.

Interestingly, all the party lawmakers, including Mr Bhutto-Zardari, in the National Assembly and Senate have been elected on the ticket of another faction of the party known as PPP-Parliamentarians headed by Asif Ali Zardari. Farhatallah Babar is the secretary general and Dr Nafisa Shah is the information secretary of the PPP-Parliamentarians.

The PPP-Parliamentarians had been registered with the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) with late Amin Fahim as its president with the permission of the then chairperson of the party, Benazir Bhutto, before the 2002 general elections when military dictator Gen Pervez Musharraf through a legal framework order declared that the parties headed by convicted persons could not take part in the elections. Since 2002, the party which had been founded by former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1967 is being represented in parliament with the name PPP-Parliamentarians.

It is interesting to note that almost all the country’s mainstream political parties, except Jamaat-i-Islami Pakistan, conduct the intra-party elections merely as a formality to fulfil the constitutional and ECP requirements and all the office-bearers are nominated by the leadership.

Political experts believe that it is because of lack of true democratic culture within the parties that the country is facing weak democratic structure and has been unable to get a genuine political leadership.

Lawyers Committee

Meanwhile, the PPP on Thursday an­­nounced the formation of a six-member lawyers’ committee for preparing and filing corruption references against the functionaries of the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) in courts and the National Accountability Bureau (NAB).

The committee is headed by former Punjab governor and legal expert Sardar Latif Khosa. Other members of the committee are Haider Zaman Qureshi, Amjad Iqbal Qureshi, Syed Mujtaba Haider Sheerazi, Shakeel Abbasi and Syed Jarrar Hussain Bukhari.

Published in Dawn, January 8th, 2021