Uphill for Bilawal

Published February 21, 2014

THE recent announcement that Bilawal Bhutto Zardari may visit Punjab next month didn’t quite get the flash attention similar excursions by the PPP owners had received in the past.

There were a few chants, and Manzoor Wattoo, the head of the PPP in Punjab, formed a few committees in anticipation of the Bilawal visit. A few workers gathered at a few places and a few vows were exchanged, but by and large the mood in the PPP camp in the province was reflective of the same tentativeness that has characterised the party’s politics over the past few years — right from when it came to power at the centre in 2008.

The PPP has once again placed its faith in its leader to revive its cadres. For whatever it is worth now, there is a feeling among politicians belonging to the party that there is anger among workers which a new beginning under a new leader can pacify.

The more realistic among the PPP politicians would not go as far as predicting that Bilawal would have the same effect on the old faithful as Benazir Bhutto once had; there is in fact a debate whether the faithful were still around. They are simply keeping their fingers crossed and for the time being hoping for a small start that could put some life into the listless body that the PPP has been reduced to especially in central and upper Punjab.

And they know that, to make the party relevant here again, their leader may have to practise a somewhat different brand of politics in this province as compared to his bold offensive in Sindh.

There have always been two sets of politics for the PPP to follow, one in Punjab and the other in Sindh. The same nationalist streak that served Benazir Bhutto’s politics so well over decades in Sindh is manifest in Bilawal’s quest for preserving the indigenous culture with a festival and his pledge to never concede Sindh to the extremists.

Punjab has been watching him daring the militants, but as pragmatic politics goes, it does not appear too keen to readily join his call for the battle. It is too caught up in its own insecurities even if present here are people and groups that do see merit in the PPP chairman’s method to reinvent a ‘much-needed’ political force.

There is a murmured demand for a return of the PPP. That is to an extent rooted in a realisation that others who could have taken up the space on the ‘centre-left’ of the Pakistani political landscape have once again failed to turn up. There is the PTI offering some opposition to the PML-N, but since both these parties are ‘centre-right’, it is assumed that the PPP’s place remains unoccupied, and that there is no better option but for the PPP to reclaim that space.

According to the generous advice lavished on young Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, the best course to reclaiming the lost space is by harnessing the anti-extremist, ‘progressive’ sentiment. His statements have been received well in some circles and he has been hailed as the bravest politician around, loudly speaking his mind whereas others have chosen to hide behind anti-Americanism and behind peace committees negotiating with the Taliban.

But the question is, can these chants help him expand his clout beyond Sindh, where the PPP, as has been usual, uses the nationalist card to retain popularity?

It has been said so many times — along with a variety of other factors, security against the militants has been a crucial reason why Punjab has restricted itself to a choice between the PML-N and the PTI. It believes that Mian Nawaz Sharif and after him Imran Khan are two leaders best suited to guard them against militancy, which, to their mind is evil, but an evil at work some distance from them.

Punjab may not take too kindly to Bilawal Bhutto Zardari if he were to carry the refrain that he has adopted in Sindh to Punjab, whenever he comes visiting. Like it or not, Punjab could get upset over someone trying to snatch away its perceived security and expose it to the war and that’s why the PPP chairperson will have to augment his main argument with other subjects, even tone down his speech against the extremists.

Bilawal needs to be less rhetorical and more practical about it, doing things, enacting policies that can lead to the re-emergence of the alternative and leaving the shouting for later. This may not go down too well with those who are once again seeking to attach ideology to the PPP. But this is also pragmatic politics, just like the politics of the past where the PPP was able to have separate streams running for Punjab and Sindh.

In any case, the PPP’s anti-extremist intent has to be accompanied by other points related to people’s everyday life. The ideal way forward for Bilawal would be to make sure that there are some success stories from his party’s rule in Sindh that can be cited in Punjab and elsewhere.

These stories are imperative to ridding the PPP leadership of its reputation that all it ever wants is power which it is incapable of using it to popular good, that it is always indifferent to incompetence and corruption in its ranks. If Sindh could send some positive stories upcountry, it could make Bilawal’s journey through Punjab a bit less uncomfortable.

The writer is Dawn’s resident editor in Lahore.

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