Why PPP dominates Pakistan’s Sindh — Dawn
In Pakistan’s Sindh province, the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) retains nearly unshakable electoral positions, while opposition alliances have failed to significantly weaken its influence. As Dawn writes, historically anti-PPP forces rallied around the Pakistan Muslim League-Functional (PML-F), while today the opposition is largely united in the Grand Democratic Alliance (GDA).
Such coalitions included former PPP members, local Sindhi nationalist groups, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement representing Urdu-speaking Mohajirs, as well as nationwide parties — the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf. According to the publication, these alliances have not created a stable alternative to the party governing the province.
The legacy of PML-F
The origins of PML-F date back to the split of the Muslim League in the mid-1950s. A separate faction emerged after the 1965 presidential election, when Fatima Jinnah brought the influential Sindhi politician and spiritual leader Pir Pagara into the party’s central leadership.
During PPP rule at the federal level in 1971–1977, PML-F was in parliamentary opposition. In late 1976, Pir Pagara joined the Pakistan National Alliance, which was to take part in the 1977 election. After General Zia-ul-Haq’s military coup in July 1977, he moved closer to the military regime.
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After the execution of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1979, Pagara, with the support of Zia’s dictatorship, reorganized PML-F into a conservative pro-establishment force. The publication notes that reliance on state patronage and support from military authorities limited the party’s ability to build a mass organization: its electoral base relied mainly on Pir Pagara’s followers in certain areas of the province.
Resources and Sindhi identity
After 2008, PPP, according to Dawn, strengthened its influence through control over provincial institutions, public resources and social programmes, including the Benazir Income Support Programme. This gives the party an advantage in areas where Sindhi speakers make up the majority of the population, while local landowning elites in PML-F and GDA find it difficult to compete with centralized provincial power.
PPP has also positioned itself as a defender of Sindh’s economic and cultural rights. The publication links this strategy to Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s policies in the 1970s, when the party incorporated the Sindhi nationalist narrative into a nationwide programme.
In Karachi, some middle-class Sindhis are critical of PPP, but at the same time see it as a force that limits the dominance of non-Sindhi political groups and prevents the city’s administrative division. In the author’s view, PPP’s dominance in the province will persist until the opposition offers an organized platform capable of responding to Sindhis’ ethnic and economic demands.
