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LATER this week, Lahore, along with 11 other districts in Punjab, will head to the polls for its first local government elections in a decade. Historically, low turnouts and praetorian re-engineering have marked local body polls in Punjab, but this time around, the comparatively high degree of open contestation between the PTI and PML-N may drive voting numbers upward.
For the ruling party, the past few months haven’t been all that comfortable on the domestic front. The speaker’s dismissal and then an electoral battle in their hometown that proved to be far closer than it should’ve been — and came along with the loss of a provincial assembly seat — hints at a less-than-sturdy hegemony. The other worrying thing, and perhaps this one was a long time coming, is the stumbling of internal battles and rivalries onto the front stage. First two cabinet ministers — involved with two occupationally linked ministries — used separate interviews to highlight their distrust and dislike of the other. Then in Faisalabad, one of the cities that heads to the polls on Oct 31, long-time rival camps headed by Abid Sher Ali’s family and Rana Sanaullah turned their turf war into an inadvertently comical, badly scripted soap opera on national television. Even in Lahore, the decision to persist with a less than capable nephew for PP-147’s re-election brought out more than a few grumbles from the otherwise party faithful.
This situation appears to be quite stark. In nearly all union councils (UCs) in Lahore, there appear to be several branches of the PML-N. There are those who claim historical association with the party, and then there are those who claim to have been brought into the party for their political pedigree. Given a finite number of tickets, and a preference system that’s largely contingent on who Hamza Shahbaz thinks is going to win, a significant chunk of the PML-N’s middle-tier operatives will either sit on the sides twiddling thumbs, or will contest as independents, provided they haven’t already been scooped up by Chaudhry Sarwar’s catch-all PTI net.
There are many brokers, intermediaries, and patrons looking to secure access to the state. For some, that access is being provided by the PML-N.
This reality of different factions or ‘groups’ operating at every tier — from the ward all the way to the district — is pervasive in the party’s organisation in nearly all parts of the province. Given the party’s historical evolution, it’s also easy to understand why.
To put it crudely, there are two kinds of successful political parties. The first are those that create mass organisational systems, premised on ideological appeal and discipline to win over a core set of supporters, and subsequently the bulk of the electorate. Examples of this variant include the MQM, PPP between 1968-1974, the BJP, and the Muslim Brotherhood. Such parties can — theoretically speaking — function outside of power and mount an important challenge using their internal resources.
The second variant is what we call a catch-all party, or an elite party. This is the model that’s dominated Pakistan’s politics, and the one PML-N conforms to the most. The internal messaging in such parties is premised on material gains — both an appeal to some vague notion of national growth, and exclusive benefits for its constituent members. The only barrier to entry and success within a party of this kind is the ability to spend and win in particular geographic areas. There is also a marked preference to substitute organisational systems for individual-run patronage systems.
Long-term electoral success, thus, is predicated on two things — capturing state power effectively through strategic alliances and leveraging electability, and then redistributing political resources to individual members. In other words, what keeps them ticking is an internal spoils system.
For the past decade, the PML-N has attempted to break out of a spoils-based party model on a few occasions — most notably during the lawyers’ movement. Yet the lack of organisational clarity within the party, along with a deeply embedded preference for securing quick victories by co-opting influential candidates, undermines any such attempts.
Between 2008-2013, the party utilised a PML-Q forward bloc to sustain its government in Punjab. Then it decided to distribute tickets to some of the bloc members against the wishes of those who’d contested on meagre resources against these politicians in 2008. In 2013, it opened its doors once again to various floating patrons, even preferring to keep some constituencies ‘open’ for the sake of inducting whoever wins.
Outside of a basic core at the central level, and some semblance of an upper-tier hierarchy in Lahore, there is simply a mass of individual brokers, intermediaries, and patrons looking to secure access to the state. For some, that access is being provided by the PML-N today. Tomorrow, if its felt they may have a better chance of securing it elsewhere, they may just amble along.
The worrying thing for long-term political development in Punjab is that the PTI is going largely the same way. After some encouraging noises about UC organisation, internal elections, and mass party appeal, they’ve dealt with factionalism and intra-party feuds by dissolving the party’s structure and opting to go for ‘coordinators’ at the provincial and district tiers. As a party in opposition, it may not be the worst strategy since it allows them to attract influential candidates, but in the long run they may run into the same problems as the PML-N.
It’s fairly obvious that the long-term consequences of operating along an elite-based model are damaging for any party’s political future. There will always be an external opposition party, and there will always be disgruntled souls within. Come 2018, the miffed souls who feel they’ve been dealt a bad hand, and those ignored in both 2013 and 2015 may just find Chaudhry Sarwar’s proactive sales pitch sufficiently attractive. Either way, the next few years will not be easy for the party currently in power in Punjab.
The writer teaches politics at Lums.
Twitter: @umairjav
Published in Dawn, October 26th, 2015
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