Despite persistent criticism in the mainstream media, the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) maintains an almost invincible electoral grip on Sindh. Standing against this dominance is a fragile opposition, historically anchored by the Pakistan Muslim League-Functional (PML-F) and currently consolidated under the banner of the Grand Democratic Alliance (GDA).
Such opposition coalitions in Sindh often assemble around the PML-F and an eclectic mix of disgruntled former PPP members, local Sindhi nationalist groups, the Mohajir/Urdu-speaking nationalist party the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), and federal players such as the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI).
The alliances have consistently failed to curb the PPP’s dominance in the province. Deconstructing this failure requires revisiting the origins of the PML-F itself. The party’s roots trace back to the mid-1950s, when Pakistan’s founding party, the Muslim League, fragmented into various self-serving factions. By the early 1960s, three primary streams dominated the League’s fractured existence: the Convention Muslim League (formed in 1962 under military dictator Gen Ayub Khan), the Council Muslim League (organised the same year by League veterans discarded by Gen Ayub) and the East Pakistan-centred Awami League.
Ahead of the 1965 presidential election, the Council League partnered with an array of leftist and Islamist parties to form the anti-Ayub Combined Opposition Parties (COP) alliance. Following COP’s defeat, its presidential candidate, Fatima Jinnah, spearheaded the creation of a distinct Muslim League faction, appointing the influential Sindhi politician and spiritual leader Pir Pagara to its central leadership, a move that birthed the PML-F.
Sindh’s ruling party’s electoral dominance in the province rests on more than patronage networks. The inability of opposition parties such as the PML-F to challenge PPP’s hold over Sindhi identity and economic realities and to build grassroots organisations have played as much of a role
During the PPP’s first government in the centre (1971-77), the PML-F was part of the parliamentary opposition. Pagara viewed the PPP chairman and fellow Sindhi Z.A. Bhutto as an upstart. Due to his spiritual status, Pagara saw himself as the true heir to Sindh’s politics and positioned his party as an extension of the country’s founding party.
In late 1976, Pagara joined the anti-PPP coalition, the Pakistan National Alliance (PNA), to contest the 1977 parliamentary election. He was also at the forefront of the violent PNA movement against the Bhutto regime, after the alliance accused the government of rigging the elections. In July 1977, when Gen Ziaul Haq toppled the government, Pagara moved close to the military regime.
After the Zia dictatorship executed Bhutto in 1979 through a controversial trial, Pagara began to shape the PML-F as Sindh’s leading political force. With the dictatorship’s backing, he reorganised the PML-F, not as a mass-based party, but as a conservative, pro-establishment counterweight to the left-leaning, anti-establishment wave that swept Sindh in the wake of Bhutto’s execution.
By establishing itself as an entity tied closely to state patronage and a military-backed government, the PML-F traded long-term grassroots political organisation for short-term institutional influence. The party’s voting base remained limited to the allegiance of Pagara’s spiritual followers, restricting its electoral viability within specific, geographical pockets of the province.
After Zia’s demise in 1988, subsequent generations of PMLF-led anti-PPP coalitions in Sindh adopted this same structure. Rather than building institutional party branches, cultivating a compelling platform or mobilising the public around economic issues, the opposition in the province continued to function as a loose conglomerate of localised feudal fiefdoms operating under the leadership of Pagara, and later under his son, Syed Sibghatullah Shah Rashdi III.
The failure of these opposition alliances stems primarily from the PPP’s mastery over the provincial patronage network that it weaved and its control over the narrative of Sindhi identity. Since 2008, the PPP has astutely utilised the provincial machinery as a widespread influence mechanism. Through the control of provincial institutions and social safety nets, such as the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP), the PPP commands the material reality of life in Sindh’s regions where Sindhi-speakers are in the majority.
This strategy has left the PML-F and other anti-PPP parties in Sindhi-majority areas restricted to tiny pockets. Landed elites in the PML-F and GDA struggle to compete with a centralised PPP-led provincial government that holds the strings of public resources. The PPP has successfully presented itself as the sole defender of Sindh’s economic and cultural rights. Even when the PPP had a huge vote bank in Punjab (1970–2008), the party’s Sindh chapters were actively evolving this narrative.
The roots of this narrative can be found in Bhutto’s two-pronged strategy in the 1970s. While the party’s overall disposition was federal (and still is), in Sindh, Bhutto usurped the Sindhi nationalist narrative that was first shaped by the likes of G.M. Syed and Sheikh Ayaz. The PPP then diluted it and placed the narrative firmly within a federal context.
The PML-F lacks the intellectual rigour to replicate anything of the sort and constantly seeks support from powerful state institutions, such as the military establishment. Whenever the PML-F or the GDA enters into tactical electoral alliances with federal parties, such as the PML-N or PTI, or urban Mohajir-centric outfits such as the MQM, most Sindhis view this as an attempt to mitigate Sindh’s provincial autonomy. In this case, even though most Sindhi nationalist groups are part of GDA, they often choose not to partner with the PML-F.
This dynamic becomes even more intricate when examining the politics of anti-PPP Sindhis residing in Sindh’s cosmopolitan capital Karachi. The city’s upper-middle and middle class Sindhis are often critics of the PPP. Yet, this demographic exhibits a pragmatic outlook. Within the socio-political spaces of Karachi, where their language and cultural heritage have historically been sidelined by urban power structures, Karachi’s Sindhis experience an acute sense of minority status. Their response to this environment is a protective reliance on the very party they criticise in private.
For Karachi’s middle class Sindhis, the PPP serves a dual function. It regulates the dominance of non-Sindhi political forces and prevents the administrative division of Karachi. Economically, the city’s Sindhis rely heavily on the provincial state apparatus to secure their socio-economic standing in a private sector that is otherwise dominated by non-Sindhi business communities.
For Karachi-based Sindhis, challenging the PPP’s dominance risks undermining the single political institution that guarantees their economic and political inclusion. Anti-PPP Sindhis spread across Karachi view the alternative represented by the PML-F as either completely aligned with federal forces or entirely incapable of protecting Sindhi interests in the metropolis.
The anti-PPP opposition in Sindh remains trapped in a cycle. By relying on legacy spiritual authority, localised feudal figures and state patronage rather than building an inclusive, progressive and organised political alternative, parties such as the PML-F have miserably failed to challenge the PPP in any meaningful manner.
As long as the opposition fails to address the deep-seated ethnic, economic and existential anxieties of Sindhis, the electoral dominance of the PPP in Sindh will endure.
Published in Dawn, EOS, September 20th, 2026
