BILAWAL Bhutto-Zardari has just been seen trying another, natural route for landing in Punjab. A few days ago, he was found in Rahim Yar Khan, reassuring the inhabitants there that since they had BB’s son amongst them, they ought not to despair as yet. As to whether the trip provided the young PPP leader any cause to be upbeat about his Punjab expedition, there was little on the horizon to indicate any sudden change of fortunes.

This is, ultimately, just too routine to create any excitement. Actually it has long since become a joke. Every few weeks there is a clamour from within what remains of the PPP in Punjab. Then there is talk, inevitably, about how BBZ planned to come to Lahore for a longish period and how he was destined to reinvigorate the party.

So bored are even the most tolerant in the crowd by this — lack of — promise that some of them might have actually been a little relieved to find out that there has been a change in plans — BBZ now seeks to undertake the exploration of the territory from the southern end, approaching Punjab from Sindh where his party is in power. Not just this, his party has some presence in Rahim Yar Khan (RYK), as shown by the 2013 general election and reconfirmed by the more recent local government polls.

The PPP has spent the last many years vowing to reinvent itself behind Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari. These have been years wasted.

The public meeting in Daharki in Sindh next to RYK in Punjab marked a significant change in angle and approach given that Lahore had seemed to be an obsession with the PPP leadership for so long. There was clearly an effort to ensure that whatever the words BBZ chose to lace his speech with he delivered them with the right amount of anger.

This was meant to convey urgency as well as a change in attitude, signifying that the PPP was in no mood to go on playing the well-meaning friend or restrained opponent to anyone. Much of the limelight in recent weeks has been focused on the new, young and energetic chief minster that the party has in Sindh and BBZ’s tone is to ideally complement the shift in gears as well as indicate the party’s desire for expansion into areas it has been of late a little reluctant to venture into.

The speech at Daharki following the visit to RYK was duly informed by emotion aimed at connecting the PPP leader with the people heart to heart. It was not the first time that BBZ referred to Imran Khan as chacha but he was intent upon conveying that he had come of age and now wanted to face the politicians in the vicinity on an equal footing. His references, too, to ‘Mian Sahib’ were franker and much more frequent, daring the PML-N leadership which has so far been rather cold in their handling of BBZ as if saying they didn’t as yet consider him potent enough to bother them.

That is a big problem for the PPP ie the refusal by the PML-N to take the ‘threat’ BBZ is trying to personify too seriously. According to many in the PPP, this equation must change as quickly as possible.

The PML-N strategy to not appear too alarmed by BBZ’s attacks and to keep on projecting him as an ally against Imran Khan has worked until now. But this perception of friendship between the PML-N and PPP may be by no stretch the biggest hurdle in the way of BBZ finding some footing in the area between Attock and RYK. As perceptions go, much more prohibitive is his political relationship with his father Asif Ali Zardari.

The PPP has spent the last many years vowing to reinvent itself behind BBZ. These have been years wasted. Nothing of import has transpired, and there’s been no spark to kick-start a new phase in the life of the party in Punjab.

The party has been dormant bar the occasional shouting of rhetorical slogans and is terribly short on ideas. The calls for reinvention have been totally out of sync with the dead status of the party organisation. BBZ has failed to come up with a system — or, before that, an approach — different to the one embodied in Zardari-style politics. Worse, with the passage of time the son has been unable to suppress an open display of fondness for the politics of his father.

Yes, this is the impression BBZ gives. He had to, it was once said, take his position on the political chessboard because the legacy he inherited owed it to the country. At the same time, he was warned against placing himself too close to his father, whose effects on the party the young man was supposed to neutralise before embarking on any grand programme of revival.

The split, even a single line of action that would truly set the young incumbent apart from whom he inherited the mantle — at least so far as the treatment of Punjab is concerned — never came. Instead, there is increasing talk of how BBZ is dependent on or desirous of direction from his father for any steps that he takes. In the original script this is exactly what he was not supposed to do.

It may be natural for a son overcome by love for his father to shout back at those who throw muck at his parent. The party leader on the other hand must find solutions to the unkindest challenges that come his way.

Take this excerpt from a message written by a long-time PPP politician in Punjab: “… I am sorry to say that my … considered view now is Bilawal either has become part of them or has given up. He seems to have accepted the subordinate role … Punjab they have written off ….”

BBZ cannot proceed any further than Daharki before he answers these questions.

The writer is Dawn’s resident editor in Lahore.

Published in Dawn, November 11th, 2016