BILAWAL Bhutto’s political career has been launched in earnest courtesy of the Sindh cultural festival. Some seem impressed by his performance. He’s got what it takes to follow his grandfather and mother’s footsteps, they say.

Maybe. But if he does make it, I doubt it will only be because of his last name. For one, patronage is no longer everything. Second, competing patrons have cropped up and, as the last election showed, can extend more attractive offers for the ‘jiyalas’.

The Sindh cultural festival gave us some hints on where Bilawal is headed. His most categorical message was to the Taliban. His opposition to them is not mere rhetoric. He’s deliberately positioning PPP to capture the vast open political space on the left of centre, a space that is naturally theirs but one they had abdicated when they ruled.

This is a start but it won’t be enough. After all, the reason all other parties are competing on the right is because that’s where the votes are. Our society has moved far enough in that direction that anyone even marginally on the left is unlikely to remain attractive solely because of their ideological stance.

The next obvious constituency for Bilawal is the traditional Sindhi base. There isn’t much of a problem here for the PPP. And being in power in Sindh again, it can far outspend any of the other political families of the province who traditionally garner the anti-PPP vote. This time, with the MQM under the gun, it may even be able to outmanoeuvre Altaf Bhai in urban Sindh.

These two combined will keep the PPP entrenched as a Sindhi party with pockets of support elsewhere. But PPP’s new, young and dynamic face surely hopes to achieve more. Here’s where the going gets tough.

For one, PPP doesn’t have a Punjab strategy. The party has been routed in Punjab, its old guard is either disillusioned with the party leadership or is at a loss because pure patronage no longer seems to work. It also cannot possibly outspend an incumbent PML-N with all its focus on Punjab. Most of all, Bilalwal doesn’t seem to have anyone with a province-wide appeal — a must to get his party’s old base in Punjab back on his side.

Second, we’re no more in the 1990s where the PPP could bank on the anti-incumbency factor carrying it through in the next election. You have a new kid on the block in PTI, and it’s more likely to gain from PML-N’s mistakes than a tried and failed horse.

Third, Bilawal needs a strong institutional machinery under his belt to have any major impact at the national level. He doesn’t have one. Zardari’s governance model may have been suited to keeping his government in power for five years but his disregard for rules and the civilised norms of decision-making has caused much damage to the PPP.

Benazir’s PPP is shaken to the core; all but Zardari’s cronies have been left out; and there’s a dearth of capacity within the party. Those worth anything don’t have the space to reorient the party’s loyalty-based style of running affairs.

Bilawal’s outfit needs a revamp. The cronies need to be put in cold storage, a nucleus of the most competent within the old guard needs to be built around Bilawal, and new blood needs to be injected and groomed to take over as the old timers fade away. The PPP’s revival has to be a decade-long strategy but it has to be a sustainable one if it is to work.

This revamp presupposes that Zardari will be willing to let it happen. Unlikely, since he stands to lose. And from what one is told, he sees nothing wrong with his way of doing business.

Sadly, Bilawal must know that his father’s buy-everyone-out model is not going to get him where he wants to be. And he must also not live under the illusion that he can somehow transform the party with the business as usual approach continuing.

Finally — and most important — the PPP seems to have forgotten the one lesson Bilawal’s grandfather and mother left for any Pakistani ruler: you can be corrupt, dictatorial, self-serving and all the rest but a certain minimum level of performance — delivering for the people that is — is non-negotiable if you have to stay in the game. The PPP’s five years in power were a train wreck. And there’s little realisation of the need to prove otherwise even in their current stint in Sindh.

Bilawal must be warned: he’s headed to lead a provincial party unless he can somehow muster the courage to change his party’s ways in the coming years

The writer is a foreign policy expert based in Washington D.C.