THE PPP today behaves almost like a pauper who has spent all his fortune but who clings on to grand descriptions. It talks about past glory, of sacrifices, of its struggle against martial law.

It promises a new charter, even some kind of a revolution. Unfortunately, the party has very little to show for all this huffing and puffing; it has only progressed backwards and is sinking deeper with every move that it doesn’t make.

We may interject that this state of the PPP is more specific to Punjab. The fact is, however, that once the journey towards oblivion has begun in Punjab, decline elsewhere — in Sindh — cannot be far off.

Also read: PPP’s Punjab leadership was in favour of by-poll ‘boycott’

Indeed, given just how easily the PPP set-up in Sindh can be ridiculed, the slip in the home province has long begun for the party of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, or whichever PPP leader one would like the remnants to be associated with at the moment.

In Punjab, the sharp dip in the PPP’s vote bank may appear deceptively of recent origin. In fact, the rot had been setting in for long. It is easy to select certain incidents and trends from many and string them together to arrive at the same conclusion: the erosion of the popular choice that the PPP embodied.

Take the latest, the by-election in NA-122 that had the PPP candidate winning 803 votes.

As symbols go, the constituency comprises areas from where Benazir Bhutto had won in 1988 — her first election — and also localities from where Sheikh Rashid, the ‘father of socialism’, had lost in the same polls.

The areas in NA-122 in a sense then not only show how the PPP has failed to keep its original aura, they offer proof that Ms Bhutto’s influence has also withered away. So far as recent evidence goes, it is under Asif Zardari’s leadership that this popular choice has been dealt the most staggering blow.

The corruption tag that has discredited the party has been there for long even if public awareness is much greater now. It is above all the so-called policy of reconciliation, translated into inaction and meekness, which has, sadly, reduced the party to a toothless entity.

It was the people who kept the PPP alive, often in spite of the Bhuttos and Mr Zardari — especially so in Punjab where it was left to flourish organically without much organisation and local leadership. The people’s desire no longer seems to be there.

Published in Dawn, October 14th, 2015

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