In the 2013 general elections, the PPP was eliminated from Punjab and reduced to a party of Sindhi waderas. Frankly, the ‘subjects’ of these feudal lords are not the most satisfied bunch around
Much is being written about the reformation, resurgence or reorganisation of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP). A young Bilawal Bhutto Zardari is its new hope. A little less than 50 years ago, when I first decided to support the PPP, a dictator ruled the land, the political left was an international reality and there were only a few political parties around other than the many iterations of the Muslim League. On the left, the major political party besides the PPP was the National Awami Party (NAP), which was divided between the pro-Moscow group known as NAP-Wali Khan and the Maoist group known as NAP-Bhashani, neither of these two names much too popular in Punjab. So, for a liberal, slightly leftish young ‘Punjabi’ person, the PPP, led by a charismatic Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was the obvious choice. For those who do not remember, the original PPP stronghold was Punjab. And that suggests that there was a time when the ideological ‘left’ had a place in the hearts of many Punjabis.
My late father, a true believer in Islamic Socialism, wrote a detailed monograph on that concept. This was serialised in Nusrat, the PPP magazine in 1969-70. By the time I hit a semblance of political maturity, I was for all practical purposes a devoted PPP supporter but never quite a jiyala (loyalist). For those in today’s Pakistan who wonder what a ‘true’ jiyala might be, for them the best comparison is that of a rock band groupie. To avoid being drafted into the army I left Pakistan in October of 1971. For the next three decades I remained in the US except for occasional visits to Pakistan. One of these rare visits to Pakistan during the 1980s was during a meeting of Pakistani-US doctors (APPNA) being held in King Edward Medical College (KEMC) in Lahore. Even though my father’s eldest brother was being honoured as the oldest living graduate of KEMC during the ‘festivities’, I could not find it in me to attend that APPNA session because General Ziaul Haq was present as the chief guest.
Even though Zia is long gone, Zia’s spawn rule Pakistan today. That perhaps tells us how much Pakistan has changed from the time the PPP emerged as a major political party in West Pakistan. Detractors of Asif Ali Zardari, the former president of Pakistan and co-chairman of the PPP, have said often enough that the political party two dictators could not destroy was finally destroyed by Zulfikar Bhutto’s son-in-law. As a supporter of the PPP, I must agree. If Benazir Bhutto had survived, could she, if re-elected as Prime Minister (PM) of Pakistan, have done a better job than she did in her previous administrations? Sadly, Zardari was the millstone around her neck in the past and would have been around even then to prevent her from doing a good job.
That brings me to the question I keep asking myself: did Zardari deliberately destroy the PPP or was it an unintentional side effect of his style of running the party? In spite of all the political brilliance attributed to Zardari, I do not think that he had the smarts or the ability to destroy the PPP. What I believe happened is what happens to ‘small’ people when they assume ‘big’ responsibilities. In the need to establish control over a suddenly leaderless PPP, Zardari did what anybody of his intellectual calibre would have done: he got rid of or else sidelined all those people in the party whose personal loyalty he could not depend on and who could have competed with him for pre-eminence within the party. And that meant that all those who were the real backbone of the party were pushed aside or out of the party, thus weakening the party to start with.
The PPP had already moved to the ideological centre and when Zardari took over it had, for all practical purposes, become a neo-liberal political party that had abandoned its populist roots. To top it off, for five years Zardari presided over a PPP government made up mostly of kleptocrats who found little time to do anything for the people and most if not all populist inclinations were abandoned. In the 2013 general elections, the PPP was eliminated from Punjab and reduced to a party of Sindhi waderas (feudal lords). Frankly, the ‘subjects’ of these feudal lords are not the most satisfied bunch around and if given a decent option in a truly fair election, they also might abandon the PPP. The big question then is whether the party of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Benazir Bhutto and Bilawal can be revived in Punjab and whether it can survive a free election in Sindh. What the PPP needs to do is maintain its support for the real poor while at the same time reinvent itself as the party of the emerging middle class.
Poverty has not disappeared from Pakistan. What has however happened in parts of Punjab is that the abject poverty that existed during the 1960s has considerably dissipated. Fifty years ago, you actually saw people walking around in Lahore without shoes. I distinctly remember cleaning women and day labourers eating discarded mango rinds with bread or having plain roti (flatbread) with an onion and some chillies as a main meal. As I alluded to in an earlier article, today people with mobile phones, motorcycles or access to a television do not consider themselves poor. The point is that in Punjab there is a rising middle class that needs a political champion. If the PPP wishes to re-establish itself in Punjab, it will have to take on that role for itself. Frankly, Bilawal is not enough to revitalise the PPP. It might help a bit though if Asif Ali Zardari decided to buy a Greek island (if he does not own one already) and spend the next decade living on that island and enjoying the many fruits of his ‘labours’.
No comments:
Post a Comment