Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) will support any attempt to rename the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) as 'Pukhtoonkhwa', a key demand of Pushtoon nationalists over the decades. "We stand with those demanding renaming NWFP and will support them," PPP NWFP chapter President Rahim Dad Khan told a news conference here on Friday.
Awami National Party (ANP) that represents secular Pushtoon nationalists in the province has been demanding for a name that could immediately identify the inhabitants of the land for quit some time now.
Khyber, symbolising unity among ethnic Afghans living in Pakistan, and Pukhtoonkhwa, a more straight reference to their local identity, have always been considerable options. ANP has never ruled the province single handedly to materialise desire to have a name of its own choice.
Other groups - PPP itself and Pakistan Muslim Leagues - which the ANP has been in ruling coalitions with some times in the past could not risk their credibility in non-Pushtoon areas of the province to go along with nationalists.
An ANP-sponsored resolution calling for changing the nomenclature was once passed in the provincial assembly but the then government led by Nawaz Sharif's party had to withdraw it due to backlash in mostly Hindko-speaking northern districts called Hazara region.
The ANP is now in a position to lead a ruling coalition in the province that was for last five years ruled by religious parties. Another attempt to change the name is highly likely. An authoritarian eight-year rule of now-hatred President Pervez Musharraf has made it more obligatory for national parties to care more for demands of smaller provinces.
The gesture from PPP, which is going to join ANP in the provincial government, is due to be welcome across Pushtoon areas where both parties have strong following together. Rahim said that his party will collaborate with all political forces in the province to establish a national government to address problems being faced by the people of NWFP.