Owais Muzaffar Tappi, the foster brother of President Asif Zardari, to run for PS-88 (Ghora Bari Taluka).
Amidst political wheeling and dealing in the run-up to the May 11 parliamentary elections, politicians are changing their loyalties and switching sides for maximum gains.
On Tuesday, the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) received a severe blow when the influential Sheerazi family of Thatta decided to part ways less than five months after joining hands with the party.
With the Sheerazis no longer on its side, the PPP will be facing a tough time on three National Assembly and five provincial assembly constituencies in Thatta district. The Sheerazis will field their own candidates against the PPP in all the constituencies.
“We will field candidates in each constituency against the PPP,” Syed Shafqat Shah Sheerazi, the family’s elder, told a news conference in Thatta. “The people of Thatta will not allow an outsider to contest from their district,” he said in an apparent reference to Owais Muzaffar Tappi, the foster brother of President Asif Zardari who has filed nomination papers for PS-88 (Ghora Bari Taluka). The PPP had earlier decided to support the Sheerazi family candidates on one National and three provincial assembly seats.
Before announcing the decision, the Sheerazis, their political ally, the Malkani family, and representatives of other likeminded communities held a three-hour-long meeting.
It was decided in the meeting that Muhammad Ali Malkani and Haji Usman Malkani would contest the elections against PPP candidates in PS-87 (Thatta-IV) and PS-88 (Thatta-V), respectively.
Shafqat complained that the PPP reneged on many promises the party leadership had made to lure the Sheerazis into the party folds. He also cited the ‘inhospitable attitude’ of the PPP leadership towards the Sheerazis at the death anniversary of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto on April 4.
Some PPP insiders, however, say that the Sheerazis’ decision to part ways with the PPP was pre-planned. “The bureaucracy plays an important role in conducting the elections. After remaining in the opposition for over four years, they joined the PPP to install officers of their choice in their constituencies. They jumped ship after achieving their objective,” a PPP leader from Thatta told The Express Tribune seeking anonymity.
Published in The Express Tribune, April 10th, 2013.
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They will join PMLN and create a bandwagon effect of other bigwigs of Sindh politics to join PMLN again. Better than PPP as a whole. Good sign for anti-PPP alliance in Sindh.
Nice going