A SHORT VIEW OF POLITICLE PARTIES FIRST PPP

Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP)

Roots: Formed in 1967 in Lahore by 39-year-old Sindhi politician, Z A. Bhutto, and veteran Marxist ideologue, J A. Rahim(1). Conceived as a populist left-wing political party to challenge the Ayub Khan dictatorship (1958-69), the PPP soon grew into becoming an inclusive platform for progressives of all shapes and sizes, hue and colour.
By the time it went into the 1970 general election, the party had developed four internal lobbies. The most prominent (at the time) was its radical left-wing led by Marxist and socialist theorists and Maoist radicals. The other powerful lobby in the party was led by ‘Islamic Socialists’ who had fused Arab Socialism and Marxism with certain egalitarian notions of the Qu’ran(2) . The third intra-party faction consisted of ‘progressive’ members of the landed elite, and the fourth, the smallest faction, consisted of moderate religionists.

Z A. Bhutto shares a joke with party ideologues. In the front of the image is J A. Rahim. The party contested the 1970 election on a socialist manifesto and managed to sweep the National and Provincial election in the Sindh and Punjab provinces (in West Pakistan).
The breakaway and a loss to India in the 1971 Indo-Pak war forced a group of military officers to dismiss General Yahya Khan (who had replaced Ayub in 1969) and invite Bhutto to form the government(3).

ZAB addressing a large rally during the PPP’s campaign trail in 1970.

ZAB addressing a leftist student rally in Karachi in 1970. The party’s left-wing dominated the proceedings between 1972 and 1974, but its influence began to erode after some of its members were dismissed from the party on ‘disciplinary grounds.’
From 1974 onwards, the policy-making largely fell into the lap of the PPP’s conservative wing that gradually began to shift the party’s ideological orientation.
By 1976 the party’s left-wing had all but withered away and in its manifesto for the 1977 election, the PPP downplayed the word socialism(4) and brought in an increasing number of industrialists and members of the landed elite into the party’s fold.
The party swept the 1977 election. But the right-wing alliance of nine anti-PPP parties, the Pakistan National Alliance (PNA), refused to accept the results and accused the regime of rigging the polls.
The PNA unleashed a violent protest movement in the urban centres of the country demanding the resignation of the government and the imposition of ‘Nizam-e-Mustapha’ (Sharia).
Amidst the turmoil, General Ziaul Haq removed Bhutto and imposed the country’s third Martial Law (July 1977).

Members of the student-wing of Jamat-i-Islami, the IJT, took out an anti-Bhutto  rally at Gordon College, Rawalpindi, during the 1977 PNA movement. The rally was led by the then IJT leader, Sheikh Rashid Ahmed. He went on to join the Zia regime as Youth Minister.

Front page of Dawn reporting the imposition of Zia’s Martial Law. Though Zia promised fresh election in 90 days, he backed out of the commitment and decided to rule the country as dictator for the next eleven years. Bhutto was executed through a sham trial in 1979. During the military regime, the PPP’s radical left-wing revived itself with the support and urging of Bhutto’s widow, Begum Nusrat Bhutto(5).

Begum Nusrat Bhutto being escorted away from a rally she held after ZAB’s arrest in July 1977. In 1981 the PPP formed a 10-party anti-Zia alliance, the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy (MRD), and was in the forefront of all the major protest movements that took place against the Zia dictatorship.
Hundreds of party workers were arrested, flogged, tortured or simply vanished.

A woman activist of the PPP’s student-wing, the PSF, clashes with the police during a rally against Zia’s draconian laws (Lahore, 1981). But just when Zia had thought that he had broken the party’s back, its new leader, 32-year-old Benazir (daughter of Z A. Bhutto), returned from exile in 1986.
She directly challenged the Zia regime by holding huge rallies in Lahore and Karachi. She also dismissed a number of her father’s old contemporaries from the party and then reinserted the word socialism in the party manifesto.
After Zia’s controversial death in August 1988, Benazir led the PPP to win the 1988 election.

Benazir waves to the crowd from a bogie of a train during her 1988 election campaign. She led the party to two election victories (1988 and 1993), but both times her government was dismissed as a consequence of dizzying power games between the PPP, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), and the establishment-backed presidents, Ghulam Ishaq Khan, and Farooq Ahmed Laghari(6).
Benazir went into exile and led the party from abroad during the Parvez Musharraf military regime that took over power in October 1999. The PPP emerged as the second largest party in the 2002 election.
In 2007 Benazir returned to Pakistan and unfolded the PPP’s new ideological orientation, describing the party to be a democratic left-liberal entity that would reconcile its differences with other democratic forces, work to end the military’s intervention in politics and rid Pakistan of religious extremism and terrorism(7).
In December 2007 she was assassinated by members of Pakistan’s most extreme militant Islamist outfit, the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), soon after she had given a speech at a PPP rally in Rawalpindi.
Her husband Asif Ali Zardari took over the leadership of the party and led it to win the February 2008 general election.
He formed a collation government with two other parties, the Awami National Party (ANP) and the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM).
The National Assembly elected PPP’s Yusuf Raza Gilani as prime minister and Zardari was elected as the country’s new president.

Asif Ali Zardari ____________________

Electoral History (National Assembly)(8)

• 1970 Election (West Pakistan)

Seats won: 81 (out of 138 National Assembly Seats) Formed government

ZAB in consultation with party members right after the 1970 election results were announced. • 1977 Election
Seats won: 155 (out of 200 NA Seats)
The election was declared null and void by the military regime that toppled the government and imposed Martial Law.
• 1988 Election
Seats won: 93 (out of 204 NA seats) Formed government.

Benazir waves to the cheering crowd after her party won the most seats in the 1988 election. • 1990 Election
Seats won: 44 (out of 206 NA seats)
• 1993 Election
Seats won: 86 (out of 202 NA seats) Formed Government.
• 1997 Election
Seats won: 18 (out of 204 NA seats)
• 2002 Election
Seats won: 64 (out of 271 NA seats)
• 2008 Election
Seats won: 95 (out of 268 NA seats) Formed government.

PPP supporters dance to celebrate the party’s victory in the 2008 election. Areas of electoral influence: Sindh; South Punjab; Parts of KP and Balochistan.
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Ideological Evolution Socialist/Populist (1967-74); Centrist/Populist (1974-77); Socialist (1978-86); Social Democrat (1988-93); Centre-left (1993-2002); Liberal-Left (2002- ).
Views on religion: Quasi-Secular, but has always been flexible enough to accommodate certain aspects of Political Islam, Sufi Islam(9) and Modernist Reformist Islam(10).

ZAB showering rose petals on the grave of Sufi saint, Data Ganj Bakhsh, in Lahore (1974). Youth Wings: Peoples Students Federation (PSF) – formed in 1972; Peoples Youth Organization (PYO) – formed in 1984.

Flag of Peoples Youth Organization