The Pakistani Spectator

As President Asif Ali Zardari is getting weaker day by day and he needs the support of his allies more and more in center and in the provinces, the allies are trying to milk the PPP as much as possible.

Now MQM is forcing PPP government to allot 40% of the government jobs in Sindh to Karachi and Hyderabad and give full control over them to the MQM Cover Committee. Though PPP leaders in Sindh government has refused to do so and they are bent on giving that quota to the rural areas of Sindh, MQM has taken up the matter to the higher notch and it seems that the vulnerable President would once again ask his provincial leaders to retreat.

This backoff from the PPP might provide short-term temporary relief to the president, but it will cost them their Sindhi powerbase which is based in the interior rural Sindh, and it will also make MQM more powerful in the Karachi which PPP wants back as its political hub.