IT’S Saturday, March 3. PPP’s Punjab secretariat in Faisal Town Lahore looks more like a tired museum tasked with preserving a glorious past.

The walls are complete with the posters of ZAB and all his natural successors. Outside, a rickshaw driver, a relic from Benazir Bhutto’s period, if not from ZAB’s, hangs around. Close by are two banners, one to welcome a senior PPP leader and federal minister to the party’s provincial secretariat.

A federal minister visiting folks in his party’s home in the province must have been some occasion. But this is an old banner and the bright red, green and black have dulled as if to signify a mellowing down of a party under the effects of power.

There have been some even more telling changes. One of the office-bearers welcoming the minister has since been wooed away by Hamza Shahbaz and is now a PML-N member. There is a strong suspicion that one other name on these banners could defect — possibly to the PTI — after he told a reporter how angry he was over the denial of a ticket to the Senate.

He was angry the ticket went to Aslam Gill, an old PPP politician in Lahore. Gill was the odd man out in the election for the Senate held on March 2. He was an exception to the rule that parties ignored old members in favour of candidates with more resources.

He was odd also because he went on to lose the election even though he was projected to be a sure winner on the basis of the PPP’s strength in the Punjab Assembly.

Five PPP members of the Punjab Assembly disobeyed the party line that led to Gill being defeated by PML-Q dissident Mohsin Leghari.

The sombre, disconnected look the party’s offices in Lahore wore the next morning summed up the mood. It was hardly a place you would associate with a ruling party and with a party known for infusing life into political proceedings. A handful of jiyalas who occupied a room in the secretariat could certainly do with some excitement, even though their party had made huge gains in the Senate an evening before. As stereotypes go, they were unusually silent.

The media buzzed with more well-known PPP names calling for a celebration of the Senate victory. They happily pointed to the number. They boasted of the quality — Aitzaz Ahsan, Raza Rabbani, et al. But after each of their proud, post-victory rides through the conquered territory, Aslam Gill returned to haunt them.

Gill’s nomination had been hailed just when the feeling about PPP’s disinterest in old workers in Lahore had been at its strongest.

The party had lost a couple of experienced local politicians to the PTI besides defections to the PML-N. There were desertions elsewhere, and the sequence that always ended with words of wisdom from the dissident duo Naheed Khan and Safdar Abbasi had been played over and over again.

Abbasi lamented the letting down of Gill. The accompanying images of presidential favourite Babar Awan and the PML-Q’s Kamil Ali Agha beaming with joy at their own victories in the Senate provided for some painful comparisons.

The principled media houses and their middle-class soldiers had portrayed Gill’s nomination as a rare instance where merit had been adhered to. They could hardly hold back when, instead, they now had a case of a feudal politician guilty of promoting his coterie and his allies at the cost of a sincere and faithful old party man.

The verdict was that Gill was the latest victim of his party’s apathy towards its workers. He was easy prey, with men from the PPP, PML-Q and PML-N, all making it to the list of conspirators.

Chaudhry Nisar had spoken of a surprise in the Senate polls in Punjab and Gill had provided one. “It was hardly an ambush,” commented an anti-PPP but pro-worker journalist. Chaudhry Nisar had made it known and if PPP did get the message, it did not or could not do anything bar promise an investigation of the shock loss.

It is not an easy situation for the PPP. The unmasking of dissenters could ultimately expose just how deep the split is and lead to a chain reaction.

PPP lawmakers in the Punjab Assembly have generally been uneasy with the leadership’s politics since the 2008 election. A probe to locate those responsible for the Gill setback could lift the lid on something cooking for long. It could prompt large-scale desertions at a time when serious doubts exist about PPP’s performance in the next election in Punjab, given its opponents and its failure to give people relief.

Can PPP risk an earnest inquiry? Governor Latif Khosa promised a probe into Gill’s loss. There was plenty of noise made by other PPP politicians but all this didn’t necessarily hint at action.

Aslam Gill, though, withdrew to his old corner in Lahore — a dedicated activist not exactly known to move crowds on his own.

His is an endangered tribe. Mohsin Leghari, the man who was elected to the Senate at his expense, embodies the smart ‘modern’ politician threatening to make the old activist irrelevant.

Leghari is a foreign-educated ‘new’ face who sought some political empowerment in his native D.G. Khan some 10 years ago. He won the Punjab Assembly seat in 2008, beating a ‘worker candidate’ of the PPP, Dr Saeed Buzdar.

Leghari could understand the three-way tussle between the PPP, PML-N and his own PML-Q created space for an intelligent man to manoeuvre. He has been one of the most active and most quoted members of the assembly. This reputation must have helped him in overcoming the candidate of a party struggling with a changing idiom, of course with help from power brokers who have always found it easier to deal with worker types.

It would hardly be surprising if Mohsin Leghari is a name more familiar to the new class than Aslam Gill.

The writer is Dawn’s resident editor in Lahore.