Daily Times

Confusion, confusion and more confusion. One can safely say that about the faces that claim to represent a major political party of the port city. The gentleman who has now made a ‘conscious decision’ to lead the party locally is caught in a rock and a hard place. On the one end, he has the ‘Supremo’ to whom he owes the unconditional loyalty, and on the other, there are the powers on the ground. This is a major test of his nerves.

Whatever happened this week was expected for a while. The Supremo was disgruntled for a long time for various reasons, and the pressure was being built from the people on the ground. The signals were loud and clear that the game was over, and it was time for the Supremo to retire and move on. But as they say, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The Supremo held the city in his tight reins from London, and people complied.

If you recall, the Supremo had made some highly offensive remarks in the past as well. Every time an apology was tendered, and the issue went under the rug. Last year, there was something that was said that perhaps was tantamount to crossing the proverbial red line. I remember writing an article for this newspaper on that particular incident. That, in my opinion, was the beginning of the end. From that point onwards, the pressure was being built day in day out. The pressure was meant to bring him to the realisation that his time was up.

As you know, in our land there are personality cults that we mistakenly call and take as political parties. To be fair, the rest of the political cults that revolve around their respective nucleuses are no different. One of the strongest cults is the one being led by the Supremo from London. No matter what happens next, the following of the Supremo will face a temporary setback but will not completely vanish. That is the thrust of the matter. Come election day, the cult followers who identify or group themselves with who they look like will identify themselves with only him.

Keeping this important factor in mind, the poor gentleman delivering the presser was under immense pressure. Logically speaking, how do you ‘disassociate’ yourself from a structure where command and control is top down? Where the founder is part of the nitty gritty of sector and unit, and addresses any of those followers on his own, and where his portraits and posters adorn the corner meetings and the sit-ins.

Much like life, in politics nothing remains constant. Things change, events happen, associations break, and new alliances are formed to maximise political gains. Undoubtedly, the Supremo’s party has brilliantly played its cards for the last three decades or so. It has enjoyed a lot of power in the days of the former dictator Pervez Musharraf. Things have changed tremendously ever since, and it sure seems that in this era some decisions have been made.

An astute politician like the Supremo who has always been able to maneuver things to maximise his political gains has perhaps miscalculated this time around. Rather than playing it as cool as a cucumber, he lost it yet again and let his venom out. Give it whatever cover or excuse, but in simple words it is political suicide. The highly offensive remarks of course did not sit well with a lot of people and rightly so. The other painful reality is that he has completely lost his chances of redemption in the eyes of those who really matter.

The ever-hungry media has found a scoop to harp about. It is going after the remaining faces and dragging them for comments. The faces left to defend the Supremo’s party are in a very tight spot. Borrowing from an age-old Urdu saying, you can’t swallow it nor can you spit it out.

The anxious anchors and their analysts on the idiot box who have been hyperventilating a phrase ‘minus one’ a tad too much have something very simple and basic to consider. My mother taught me the rudimentary arithmetic principal of subtraction at home. I still remember it to this day, and so do most people. When you subtract one from one, the result is always a big fat zero.

This basic concept of arithmetic is very valid in this context. The party without the Supremo is zero. You can give it whatever name you like or rename or rebrand, the offshoots will end up in the dustbin of history. This has been a time-tried, time-tested and time-failed formula. It has never has worked in the past, and it never will in the future.

People now claiming to make their ‘independent decisions’ are zero as well in terms of their ability to command and control. The days ahead will bring more revelations and more scoops that may be damning. The rather bizarre aspect of all these revelations and allegations is that they will have zero impact on the loyal and diehard voter and supporter.

The writer is a Pakistani-US mortgage banker. He can be reached at dasghar@aol.com. He tweets at http://twitter.com/dasghar