The Pakistani Spectator

After gaining an unprecedented foothold in Balochistan as Qadir Baloch and Sanaullah Zehri joined PML-N, Nawaz Sharif landed in Karachi with a thud as he announced that he intends to dispel the Sindh Card instead of racing for it or combating it with any other provincial card.

Sindh Card is attributed to the Pakistan People’s Party and the idea and term was actually coined by late Benazir Bhutto and she often used that though her father was not that much fond of declaring Sindh as his powerbase, rather Bhutto Senior always considered the whole of Pakistan as his strength, which was also a reality. But during the leadership of Benazir Bhutto, PPP only remained strong in Sindh and showed mediocre performance in other provinces.

Now President Asif Zardari, the co-chairman of PPP, widower of Benazir is also trying to play the Sindh Card though the response is not what he expected. PPP is fast losing its powerbase in Sindh. Karachi and Hyderabad are now MQM cities. Sanghar, Badin and Shikarpur are heavily Pir Pagara’s den. Border and coastal areas of Sindh are divded upon tribal lines and have very less to do with the PPP or any other party. PPP now only enjoys power in Larkana, Nawab Shah and some other parts of the interior Sindh. Even some strongholds of PPP like the constituency of Makhdoom Amin Fahim are also not happy with the current leadership of Zardari.

Nawaz Sharif can crack the nut of Sindh Card, if he focusses on interior Sindh. That’s fair too. Zardari, soon after coming at helm, assinged Manzoor Wattoo, a former companion of Nawaz Sharif along with archrival of Nawaz, Salman Taseer to resurrect PPP in Punjab and for that President also promulgated governor rule in Punjab. But that proved a colossal failure. Nawaz Sharif has got a fair chance, if he spends more time in Sindh and join hands with the angry factions of PPP like Jatoi and some of Bhutto clans. Nawaz Sharif still enjoys goodwill in the rural Sindh where once he distributed land among haris.