Daily Times

To his credit, Mian Nawaz Sharif opened up the economy during his first stint as Prime Minister (PM). He has exceptional ability as an entrepreneur to do much more for the country. Many, including myself for a number of years, had vested very high hopes in him. Unfortunately, instead of opposing Zardari tooth and nail, he seems to have made a Faustian bargain with him this time around. What really happened on election day 2013 is still not clear. Suffice it to say that former Chief Justice (CJ) Iftikhar Mohahammad Chaudhry and former Justice Ramday embroiled themselves in a realm of controversy by directly engaging with the Returning Officers (ROs) in Punjab.
Contrary to its democratic socialist credentials, the PPP, founded at Dr Mubashar Hassan’s house in Lahore on November 30, 1967, brought together totally diverse ideologies in one melting pot among its original members. To the left were Communist-leaning luminaries like Dr Mubashar Hassan, J A Rahim, Meraj Muhammad Khan and Shaikh Rasheed, and balancing them on the right were diehard feudal heavyweights like Ghulam Mustafa Khar, Makhdoom Muhammad Zaman Talibul Maula, talented cousin Mumtaz Bhutto and Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi. The PPP’s first secretary seneral, former Foreign Secretary J A Rahim, an Urdu-speaking Bengali from Midnapore near Kolkata, issued the party’s first manifesto on December 9, 1967: “Islam is our religion, democracy is our politics, socialism is our economy, power lies with the people.”
The PPP’s catchy populist slogan “roti, kapra aur makaan” (food, clothing, shelter) caught the imagination of the masses. With able people around him, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s charisma, coupled with his intellect and drive, translated his ambition for power into reality within four years, albeit helped by the disintegration of the country in 1971. There is evidence to suggest that Ms Benazir, having learnt her lessons from the drubbing the PPP got in the 1997 elections (not only because of Zardari’s ‘Mr 10 percent’ tag), was intent on reactivating the party’s original roots and agenda thereof in 2007. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s wildest imagination could never have coped with son-in-law Asif Ali Zardari, who had no socialist tendencies whatsoever, one day becoming the democratic socialist party’s head by default of being the widower of his illustrious daughter Benazir.
The founding members must have turned over in their graves at those in Lahore, except for Aitzaz Ahsan and a handful of others, recently celebrating the party’s founding 47 years ago, light years away from the party formed at its birth, or for that matter its manifesto. Socialism in the PPP is given lip service only; it is now totally feudal and capitalist. The 1970s legacy and the Bhuttos — father and daughter — have kept the party as a major player in Pakistani politics using Bhutto’s grandson and Ms Benazir’s son, Bilawal Bhutto, as a façade. Zardari has invented a new PPP to protect himself, keeping whatever is left of the party in line, particularly in interior Sindh.
Zardari is no ordinary politician. In fact, he is an extraordinary politician, ruling for over five years, keeping the major opposition of the PML-N and other opposition partners satisfied and off balance in one way or the other, turning the army into a ‘silent’ spectator. Zardari beggared Pakistan by focusing on one aim: compromising the army chief. Nobody asked (or wanted) Kayani to take over; he could have been more assertive in stopping the plunder. He let the army down and he let Pakistan down. History will record that, in the final analysis, he let himself down.
The change in public mood and aspirations across the broad spectrum in Pakistan is startling. Imran Khan has adopted the Bhuttos’ (father and daughter) mantle in the eyes of the masses. True that Imran’s fiery rhetoric may have turned off a lot of people in the drawing rooms of the country, but for every man (or woman) that the PTI chief has lost, he has gained thousands more who have never seen a drawing room in their lives. Coincidently, Bhutto faced similar scepticism in the run-up to the 1970 elections when nobody in their drawing rooms gave him a hope in hell of getting more than a few seats in the National and provincial Assemblies.
The women’s vote from 1970 on went solidly to Bhutto till 2008. Has anyone counted the percentage of women at PTI rallies recently? As the greatest beneficiary of youth voter registration, time and demography are on his side. Couple the charisma and populist rhetoric, and he emerges as the true political heir of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Ms Benazir Bhutto. On November 30, 2014, those partying in Lahore represented the same feudal and corrupt status quo that Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and his close aides vowed to change in 1967. The PTI rally in Islamabad was the real celebration of the original PPP.
In August 2014, I had suggested to Imran and his close aides to read up on Clausewitz. Imran Khan has changed tack by not insisting on “the resignation of the PM”, a constitutional non-starter that the PML-N successfully employed within parliament to sidetrack the genuine demands for electoral reform. The crowds, in their numbers, may not brave the winter cold as it sets in, therefore the escalation to Plan C, and the threat of Plan D. The Nawaz Sharif government must be commended for responding to countrywide calls for talks to end the agitation.
Instead of seeking power for power’s sake, Imran must be the catalyst for electoral reform so that only the best, and not the worst, get into parliament by a correct exercise of the vote for genuine democracy, starting at the grassroots level. With apologies to Rudolf Georg Binding, commanding a squadron of German Dragoons for four years on the western front during the First World War (1914 to 1918), in his 1927 novel A Fatalist at War, one can label Imran Khan as “a catalyst at war”!

The writer is a defence analyst and security expert