AND then ‘suddenly’ we entered the phase of party elections. The party workers, in most cases seldom allowed even an opportunity with their chiefs, were given a generous choice of electing their leaders, unopposed and essentially by nomination.

The exercise did invoke some funny lines. Like a clever congratulatory note from one of the media managers working with a camp. He hailed our latest scoop, this time a leaked news story on the eve of the intra-party polls predicting that both Shahbaz Sharif and Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi were likely to be elected as the Punjab chiefs of their parties, which they were in due course.

Somewhat of a surprise, however, came from Karachi. A newspaper reported that Comrade Abid Hasan Minto had decided to ‘retire’ after a 65-year-long run in politics. This sounded a little too much given all that still needs to be done and considering all those who can still benefit from Minto Sahib’s presence at the centre of the Awami Workers Party. Maybe a subtler role, a revolution-maker through more active lieutenants, but certainly there can be no retirement for the veteran politician.

Khurshid Shah has conveniently resumed his role, where he can criticise both the government and the PTI in the same vein.

As it met, the AWP did manage to do a few things right. For instance, it freed from organisational duties a couple of youngsters from Lahore — more than a couple actually — to carry on with their promising careers as writer and reporters. Politics may be a noble profession, but it is tough for a journalist to see promising souls giving up or delaying the search for people’s news stories by, instead, choosing to act as activists and political workers.

Not least, the party ensured that everyone’s favourite Tariq Farooq Sahib was allowed to continue in a prominent role even when he had exhausted his two constitutional terms as general secretary. He will now address the audience as the spokesperson of the party. Which group within this left-amalgam will he represent we will soon know, since we already understand that Comrade Farooq Tariq doesn’t need a second invitation to be vocal in the media.

The tone is important for many parties — the PML-N and PPP for example. Intra-party elections have facilitated that change in tone. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has for some time been trying to get rid of his formal trappings and speak from the heart. His talk as prime minister has been progressively high on sentiment, but his address after he was elected unopposed as the leader of the PML-N was perhaps how he had been meaning to deliver it all this while.

Mr Sharif had reason for celebrating his unchallenged long reign as PML-N chief and sounded his most belligerent in a long time. This was definitely him at his most caustic since his heart surgery. The wittiest part of the speech was when he played on an Urdu idiom to remark that others were condemned by fate to map the roads he and his party were destined to build. But of course, this was not the sentence that caught everyone’s attention. The speech might have been incomplete without mention of the famous ‘dugdugi wallah’, whose beat actors in this country have traditionally been unable to resist.

There’s no accurate English translation for this dugdugi wallah, or madari as he is alternatively called. So peculiar is the term to this land. But what was rather surprising was that it appeared that the dugdugi wallah the prime minister referred to this time kindled different, and opposite, images in the minds of the people. What else can explain why the opposition leader in the National Assembly had to reassert the old meaning of the term?

Khurshid Shah ‘explained’ that by dugdugi wallah the prime minister meant powerful actors other than the ordinary politicians — the establishment as we call it, even though Shah Sahib, fresh from his own little hobnobbing with PPP workers in Karachi, stopped short of using the word.

Now how fantastic is that? The PTI is poised to lock Islamabad down, forcing the prime minister to roar loud vows about his plans to stay on — and just as the people were wondering about what equations were emerging, a senior PPP politician reconnected the dots to complete an old picture. 

This is a huge stride towards clarity and leaves the PTI much stronger in the eyes of many who might have been struggling to figure out what Imran Khan is up to and how he is going into this all by himself. Khurshid Shah illustrated the point for all those who were too naive to read into Mr Sharif’s latest challenge to the pro-Imran camp. They will now have some purpose to their movement towards Islamabad.

Having so graciously broken the code in Mr Sharif’s statement, Khurshid Shah has conveniently resumed his role, where he can criticise both the government and the PTI in the same vein for acting wrongly. He questions the wisdom behind the lockdown and then hits out at the government for not heeding calls for a Panama probe. Logically, the PPP could next be found protesting, with greater vigour, against the government’s refusal to investigate the matter. The PPP leaves the job to the PTI and opts for the safer task of watching the clash from close range, hoping to intervene at an opportune moment.

The lines will get clearer as the lockdown day of Nov 2 approaches. The thin layer pretending that this was all noise and no substance is wearing off, regardless of what gains this thrust will ultimately bring for the PTI. The noise is being countered by even louder chants of vilification, about personal affairs and scandals. This is going to get louder and louder. It is going to be ugly. The expectation — the fear — is that it cannot go on like this for ever. There has already been a kind of lockdown in the country. The siege must yield a result some time. One of the two sides has to be sufficiently defeated.

The writer is Dawn’s resident editor in Lahore.

Published in Dawn, October 21st, 2016