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 t...