Zafar Ali Shah had developed differences with the ruling party after his nephew lost the Naushero Feroze by-elections. PHOTO: WIKIPEDIA
In a surprising development, Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) MNA and senior politician Zafar Ali Shah has decided to ditch his party and announced that he is going to join Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N).
He will formally announce his new political affiliation during PML-N leader Nawaz Sharif’s visit to his native Naushero Feroze on January 25. Before joining the new party, Shah will resign from his national assembly seat (NA 212). The seat was allotted to him by Benazir Bhutto before she was assassinated in 2007.
The decision to join PML-N comes after the PPP decided not to allot a ticket to his nephew in the by-polls held on November 17, where his younger brother, MPA Dr Ahmed Ali Shah, had vacated his seat over holding dual nationality.
Negotiations between PML-N and Zafar Ali Shah intensified soon after the by-election and his final decision to join the party was made at Raiwind on Tuesday. The leader of the opposition in the National Assembly, Chaudhry Nisar, has reportedly played a key role in bringing the senior PPP stalwart to the party.
“We are in Lahore and have held very successful meeting with Nawaz Sharif and his party leader. We, along with our family members and friends will join the party on January 25,” Dr Ahmed Ali Shah, former MPA and younger brother of Zafar Ali Shah told The Express Tribune.
This is not the first time Zafar Ali Shah has decided to leave the party. The hanging of PPP founder Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1979 and the murder of his son Mir Murtaza Bhutto in 1996 had also led Zafar Ali Shah to part ways with the party.
After Bhutto was hanged, Shah contested the non-party basis election during General Zia’s regime in 1985 and won a national assembly seat. He later joined Muhammad Khan Junejo’s cabinet as federal minister for Industries. But when Murtaza Bhutto was killed in Karachi, Shah criticised Benazir Bhutto and her spouse President Zardari and joined Murtaza Bhutto’s party, Pakistan Peoples Party (Shaheed Bhutto) and lost the election to a PML-N candidate. Benazir later convinced him to rejoin the party because he was the strong candidate of PPP in his constituency.
“He was close to Benazir Bhutto and has never been in the good books of the current leadership of the party.
His speech against the new local government system and PPP in parliament escalated the differences between Shah and party leadership last year. This prompted our party to nominate another candidate rather than his nephew for the by-polls,” a senior PPP leader said.
Ancestral constituency
Zafar Ali Shah has been elected around eight times as National Assembly and Sindh Assembly member from his ancestral constituency Naushero Feroze (II), but most of the time he had won as an independent candidate. Shah’s grandfather Allahindo Shah was member of Bombay legislative assembly and his father Muhammad Ali Shah was among the members of Sindh Assembly who had passed Pakistan Resolution in 1940.
“He has not been loyal to PPP and people of Sindh. How can a man be loyal who had joined the Zia regime?” Lal Bux Bhutto, member federal council PPP remarked, adding that recent by-polls in Naushero Feroz have proved whether the party was strong or individuals.
Published in The Express Tribune, January 9th, 2013.
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