DURING Gen Pervez Musharraf’s time a television host asked Benazir Bhutto about the low attendance at the PPP jalsas that had just taken place. BB’s answer was that the time when curious souls were attracted to a public meeting in search of news had long gone, which implied that the rally organisers now had to innovate to woo the crowds.

It would seem that in the period to follow, speakers at public rallies have been faced with a real challenge to keep the audience’s attention, and as their addresses have been televised they have been in great danger of sounding repetitive. In more recent times, with drives against the government heating up and entailing an unending flurry of pro-democratic statements from the PML-N and those siding with it, the repetitions have been all the more obvious. Yet, some refrains uttered from the stage appear to not bore the people while others wear them down.

BB all those years ago might have had a point — primarily about the need for her party to find the new idiom to engage with the people. Whereas the challenge now falls to the young, still unaware Bilawal Bhutto Zardari to locate the realities and sentiment to build his own speech upon, others with little claim on oratorical finesse have been able to strike a chord with a large number of Pakistanis.

The two dharnas in Islamabad have been a study in contrast between the speaking prowess of the two leaders Imran Khan and Tahirul Qadri.

The two dharnas in Islamabad have been a study in contrast between the speaking prowess of the two leaders, Imran Khan and Dr Tahirul Qadri. The allama’s emphasis was on spewing out one address after another, skillfully wading his way through one issue after another, shifting gears with the facility of someone trained in the art since a young age.

For reasons of providing substance to his attack on the system, Dr Qadri was mindful of the need to create the impression that he was always expanding the scope of his observations. He started simply by stating the purpose of his drive — change of system — and then expanded on his thesis to say what he actually meant by this change. Reform of the taxation machinery, legal reforms, for example, came to be included in his agenda with the passage of time.

Imran Khan’s stage appeal to the contrary is often explained by his sheer inability to talk like a traditional politician. He is regarded by his supporters to be a man who is unaffected by all that is conventional or stale in Pakistani politics, the implication being that the outdated frills that are vainly justified in the name of eloquence must be done away with to allow the new leader to have a heart to heart with the people.

So what if Dr Qadri has now ordered the dismantling of his dharna, having earlier famously warned Imran with a dire end in case Imran decided to return from Islamabad empty-handed? Dr Qadri always speaks like a conventional politician, some Imran supporters would point out.

To those who went to a particular government school in Islamabad, the sporty talk that Imran religiously indulges in before prime-time audience each evening may be strikingly reminiscent of the PTI that they encountered quite early in life.

For those who weren’t there to enjoy it first-hand, that PTI, or physical training instructor, always wore a stern, determined look and he was so very fond of peppering his brief motivational lectures with examples of success from his youth. By the third or fourth session, everyone was so sure of what the PTI was going to say next that hardly anybody would be listening.

Imran Khan’s speeches, on the other hand, have not had the expected impact on the people. He speaks and speaks and repeats and repeats it all over again. He leaves lines half said, he fumbles with poetry and his arrogance is reinforced by the way he is seen dismissively interacting with those around him on stage. Yet his campaign shows no signs of being in any way affected by his reputation as a ‘below-average’ speaker.

It is his ‘truth’ that a large, growing, number of people are interested in and the impression one gets is that they are so receptive to his message and his politics that they are even ready to disregard the conventional elements he is surrounded by.

It is then — it has always been — not so much the way it is spoken but about what exactly is the message, what realities it is informed by. Shah Mehmood Qureshi delivered the same old-school speech to herald the new Pakistan at the Multan public meeting that he has perfected through his long years in politics here.

Later on, it was alleged that he kept on talking to the crowd at Qasim Bagh even when a few of those in attendance fell before him because of heat and exhaustion.

The scenes run by television channels of unconscious men being clumsily lifted out of the venue would have been scandalous had they belonged to a party other than the popular Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf. Instead, and despite the effort by some channels to generate controversy, the tragic deaths by stampede at the PTI jalsa in Multan seemed to have faded quite quickly from the debate. The stress is on the feats Qureshi has performed in his hometown in Imran’s company.

According to the current ratings, Shah Mehmood Qureshi is a clever politician who has delivered Multan to his leader when winning Multan was of great significance.

Arguably, the PTI could have done better with someone other than Amir Dogar, a PPP defector, as its candidate. But Qureshi could sense the occasion and was confident that the choice of Dogar as PTI candidate would expose the depleted PPP without endangering the PTI’s chances of victory against the main opponent, the PML-N. He is hailed, despite his habit of chewing on words and his leader’s perceived weakness of delivering them unprocessed.

The writer is Dawn’s resident editor in Lahore

Published in Dawn, October 24th, 2014