Positioning itself for the upcoming elections, the PPP has replaced Punjab Governor Sardar Latif Khosa with Makhdoom Ahmad Mehmood, provincial president of Muslim League (F) and a veteran politician from an influential family in South Punjab's Rahimyar Khan District. The appointment was widely perceived as PPP Co-chairman President Asif Ali Zardari's master stroke at a time the PML-N seemed to be gaining strength, forging significant alliances in different parts of the country, particularly in Sindh. It comes days before the PML-F chief Pir Pagaro was due to meet with Nawaz Sharif in Lahore to finalise an electoral alliance agreement, leading to speculation that the Nawaz League's alliance strategy is to suffer a major setback both in South Punjab and Sindh.
However, Sharif's flirtations with other Sindhi politicians opposed to PPP's seem to have irked the Pir Sahib and he has ruled out any pre-poll alliance with Sharif. The PML-F so far is keeping its options open. The party General Secretary, Imtiaz Sheikh, has said Makhdoom Mehmood tendered his resignation following a meeting with the party President Pir Pagaro, and that his decision to accept Punjab governorship was his own rather than that of his party. The governor-designate, however, gave no such impression as he told an interviewer that the Functional League was unhappy over the Nawaz League's decision to welcome within its fold former MNA Ahmad Anwar from Khanpur and Raees Munir from Sadiqabad without consulting him. Despite Imtiaz Sheikh's explanation, the Makhdoom from Rahimyar Khan still talked as if he had never left the Functional League saying "we have also made it clear to everyone that the PML-F will contest the coming polls with its own symbol, flower." He added, "If the PML-N does not want to consult us regarding its political arrangements in south Punjab and Sindh then we too don't need it."
Before he joined the Functional League, the PPP's new appointee for the Punjab governor position was part of the Nawaz League and a close friend of Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif. Given the background, even if the PML-F disowns him, he would still be valuable for the PPP due to his personal clout in South Punjab, where the PPP won most of its Punjab seats during the 2008 election and hopes to bolster its chances for the upcoming one. He is a strong advocate of two new provinces in South Punjab, and has a declared dislike for some local influentials who have joined the Nawaz League. Both factors would play well for the PPP at the election time. In case he manages to have his party forge an alliance with the PPP, the latter would not only improve its fortunes in South Punjab, it could recover a lot of the lost ground in interior Sindh. The appointment, without a doubt, is a smart move on President Zardari's part as he leads his party into the national elections.
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