How long can the PPP survive on the legacy of ZAB?
SUKKUR: For over eight years, the PPP, led by Asif Zardari, had appointed octogenarian Qaim Ali Shah as chief minister, along with a governor accused of numerous heinous crimes. Now, the PML-N has gifted this province with another aged former chief justice as governor. The irony is that this province, once proud to have sons like Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Abdullah Haroon and Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto (ZAB) is today being led by men who consider allegations of crime, corruption and kickbacks a merit. The latest is the choice of a man allegedly guilty of numerous criminal charges that have been substantiated by several JITs as president of PPP Karachi. In politics, perception is as powerful as truth and the large majority perceive cronies of AZ as tainted, lacking credibility and integrity.
Review the calibre of ZAB’s cabinet members or his choice of men to head PIA or the State Bank of Pakistan and those appointed by this party when it held power from 2008 onward. Compare the integrity, character and credibility of ZAB appointed Nur Khan as CEO of PIA to the controversial choices of semi-literate cronies of late. PIA rose from ashes under Nur Khan and sank to the pits.
Larkana, the constituency of the late ZAB and his daughter Benazir Bhutto, has a collapsed infrastructure of roads, hospitals and schools and has the highest number of reported HIV cases today, with crime at its peak in both rural and urban centres of this province. It is not a lack of funds allocated for development but rampant and institutionalised corruption within the paid bureaucracy patronised by equally corrupt political godfathers, which is the cause of Sindh’s woes.
How long can the PPP survive on the legacy of ZAB? It is time a new leadership takes hold of the party and restores it to its past glory.
Aneela Chandio
Published in The Express Tribune, December 1st, 2016.
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