THE PPP has reached a point where a clutch of trained, skilled members are leaving it and going over to a party that appears to be the counter-force to the PML-N in Punjab. Many PPP stalwarts have crossed over to the Imran Khan camp in recent days. Many others are set to follow suit. Calls from within the PPP to remind them of the merits of loyalty seem to have had little effect on the outward-bound — those who are asked to be faithful to the party have someone closer to be sympathetic to: themselves. There are many explanations for this exodus; the most wanting in reason refers to it as another season of cleansing within the party. But this does not appear to be the usual load-shedding of the unwanted. These departures are a huge, if not fatal, blow to the PPP because at the moment it is struggling to stay relevant.

The situation in Sindh — the last PPP bastion — is an obvious influence on the defections in Punjab. But the truth is this could well have happened a long time ago. The loud, then fading, demands to have a party that at least pretended to stand and work towards a softer cultural milieu went unheard. They were left unaddressed by a PPP leadership which felt no qualms in transforming the party from a people-driven entity to one where decisions were imposed from above. Having quite spectacularly spent its capital, like unworthy heirs to a rich legacy, they are now content to tag along and act as appendages rather than seeking to take the initiative.

In their defence, they may say they had little chance of preventing the large-scale defections in a country where both the militants and the military have shown such a strong dislike for their politics — which doesn’t relieve the pain of witnessing the shrinking of political choices in the country. That erstwhile Bhuttoists can switch to whatever ideology is symbolised by Imran Khan is a reconfirmation — the umpteenth one — of the redundancy in the Pakistani political arena of the brand other than the one that is pursued by both the PML-N and PTI. Mr Khan and Mian Nawaz Sharif have often been described as two sides of the same coin, fighting for the same interest groups and duelling for the mantle of the leadership of a single group. If the PPP once offered a clear or nuanced alternative, now, depleted by the defections, it will find it hard to regain the ground it has lost. It is no coincidence that the defections are being blamed on a policy adopted by Asif Ali Zardari and executed by the likes of Manzoor Wattoo. It is a policy that puts emphasis on what happens not on the streets but inside the drawing rooms — from where Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had once pulled it out to place in the public domain.

Published in Dawn, July 3rd, 2015

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