President General Pervez Musharraf's military-led regime had to go to extraordinary lengths before and after the 10 October 2002 elections to place Sindh under its control. With the help of top leaders from the ruling Pakistan Muslim League (Quaid-e-Azam) (PML-Q) in Islamabad, including Prime Minister Zafarullah Jamali and senior intelligence officials, the difficulties were surmounted and a provincial setup extremely favourable to Musharraf eventually emerged. Even after taking 67 of the provincial assembly's 168 seats, the Pakistan Peoples Party (Parliamentarians) (PPP-P), the single largest group in the house, had to be content with sitting on the opposition benches in the company of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, an alliance of six religious parties.
Well before the general elections, the military regime had initiated the process of forming client parties and coalitions in Sindh. Some of these are the provincial offspring of national parties that were born with military assistance. Others were manufactured locally by Islamabad's factotums and their underlings. The PML-Q is an instance of the former species. The PML-Q, otherwise known as the "king's party", emerged in the wake of deposed Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's exile to Saudi Arabia in 2000 through a deal that is yet to be made public. The majority of PML (Nawaz) politicos left the party and formed the Quaid-e-Azam league, which openly supported the bloodless military coup of General Musharraf and got political largesse in return. This national symbiosis naturally extends to the provinces as well and therefore Sindh has its own branch of the kings party.
Since the PML-Q could not on its own deliver Sindh to the military regime, special arrangements had to be made at the provincial level. As a first step Islamabad helped to orchestrate the rise of political to counter the influence of the Benazir Bhutto-led Pakistan Peoples Party, (whose parliamentary wing is called Pakistan Peoples Party – Parliamentarians) in its stronghold. The most significant of these creations was the Sindh Democratic Alliance (SDA). Bureaucrat-turned-politician, Imtiaz Shaikh formed the SDA in mid-2001 after resigning from a senior government post. In launching the party he secured the support of a clique of feudal lords and bureaucrats on a common anti-PPP stance. The group initially called itself an alliance of politicians and included the National Peoples Party (NPP) led by Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi, a feudal baron and veteran politician. Imtiaz Shaikh, who in the early 1990s was the right-hand man of the late chief minister, Jam Sadiq Ali, whose tenure was characterised by political victimisation and fiscal misappropriation, undertook a massive propaganda campaign to prepare the ground for transforming this loose alliance into a political party. Irfanullah Marwat – the son-in-law of former President Ghulam Ishaq Khan, an advisor to the Jam Sadiq government, and an accused in the alleged rape of two PPP workers – also joined the SDA. Ironically, one of the two PPP workers who accused Marwat of rape, Raheela Tiwana, subsequently shifted political allegiance and eventually joined the SDA before going on gain a ministerial post in the provincial government. Such are the dynamics of military inspired party formation in Sindh.
The SDA, which had been consolidating its base for more than a year prior to the October election, was recognised as a political party only three months before the general elections. Among other reasons, this ensured that the party was held on a tight leash through the period that it was taking shape. In the meantime, the SDA and five 'mini' political parties – the NPP, the Millat Party (led by former president, Farooq Leghari, who had dismissed Benazir Bhutto's government in November 1996), the Sindh National Front (led by Bhutto's estranged uncle, Mumtaz Bhutto), the Balochistan National Movement (BNM) and Pakistan Awami Tehrik of Allama Tahirul Qadri – came together to contest the elections under the banner of the National Alliance (NA). (The BNM and the Pakistan Awami Tehrik subsequently broke away and contested the elections separately.) NPP president Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi, despite being in London after practically retiring from politics, became its chairman. Former cricketer, Imran Khan – now heading his own party, the Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf – had been a vocal supporter of General Musharraf. Though he then went on to part ways with Musharraf over the President-General's dubious 30 April referendum, he was nevertheless thought to be a part of the NA.