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Islamabad: Elements opposed to Asif Ali Zardari, co-chair of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) that leads the country's ruling coalition, have begun to pool their energies to "return the party to the Bhutto family" that has been at the centre of the country's politics since the late 1960s.
The number of opponents of assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto's widower Zardari is increasing.
Some key party stalwarts are weighing the option of creating a new faction in the PPP and installing someone from the Bhutto family as head of what is arguably the country's most popular political party.
After Benazir's assassination December 27, 2007, Zardari read out her will, according to which he was to head the party after his wife. Zardari instead named his son Bilawal, a student of Oxford, as the party chairman and named himself co-chairman.
Some party leaders and many of its workers do not accept this.
Name change rejected
Three days after Benazir's assassination, Zardari hyphenated her surname to his own and to those of his three children.
Thus, Bilawal is now called Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari. But this has been rejected by other Bhutto family members, who have started lobbying for naming someone from the Bhutto family as head of the PPP.
Now, with the arrival of Bhutto's niece Sassi in Pakistan, speculation is rife that anti-Zardari elements in the PPP and the Bhutto family are getting together and may make things difficult for Zardari's supporters in the PPP.
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