LAHORE: Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) leaders who had joined the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) just before the general elections in 2018 but lost their seats have gone incommunicado and sources within both the parties say that most of them are looking to join back PPP in the coming days.
Former Punjab chief minister Manzoor Wattoo and Nadeem Afzal Chan, a former spokesperson for the prime minister, have decided to part ways with the ruling party and rejoin the PPP.
Chan had joined the PTI in April 2018 and contested the general elections on the party ticket from NA-88 (Sargodha-I), but lost the contest. His brother, Gulraiz Afzal Chan, is currently a PTI lawmaker in the Punjab Assembly from PP-68 constituency of Malakwal.
Sardar Ghulam Abbas, a local influential from Chakwal who had quit Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) in May 2018 but embraced the narrative of the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) in 2020, is also expected to join the party.
In this context, the aforementioned politicians have started establishing contacts with the PPP leadership.
Entrenched local powerbrokers, who include feudal lords, tribal chiefs, clan elders and spiritual leaders and are known as “electables”, hold about a quarter of Punjab’s 141 National Assembly seats.
Punjab, in turn, accounts for more than half the 272 elected seats in the Lower House, making it the key election battleground.
In 2018, at least 21 Punjab MPs from PML-N had defected to PTI before the elections.
