Daily Times

The principal focus of a political party is the effectiveness and populist associations of people from all walks of life, who care deeply and devote their time and passion, and not necessarily their chequebooks to participate in democracy. No other political party suffered as much as the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) in the last parliamentary elections, and the recent Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) elections. It has barely managed to emerge as the second largest party with 31 seats in the National Assembly. It has retained its stronghold only in Sindh. But as the political pundits note, the rise and fall of the PPP is subjected to a strategy of shapeless, heterogeneous coalitions based on continual and shifting compromises, which reached its limits as the century wore on. After big defeats in the 2013 general elections, the PPP has not restored the status quo ante, each time becoming smaller and narrower, and its parliamentary wing less representative of the country. Does this imply the beginning of the end of the PPP as a mainstream political party? Will the PPP boil down to just being a regional party?

The PPP was left for dead in 2013. The political formation that dominated 20th-century federal politics looked like a spent force. The country seemed to have finally outgrown the brokerage politics that had underwritten the PPP’s astonishingly long run as Pakistan’s natural governing party. A few decades ago, the PPP managed to bridge party’s natural divisions to win far more elections than any other party. Early 21st century religious and liberals both employed sensitive strategies, out of a recognition that Pakistan is too young and fragile to survive parties that exploited linguistic, regional, class or ethnic divisions. The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) was far better at this than the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), becoming the default choice of voters in the last elections.

By the time Asif Ali Zardari came out of power, the big-tent era was effectively over. The PPP had lost their Punjab bedrock, and had been nearly shut out of the northwest. A fragmented opposition allowed the PML-N to win the majority, but with an overreliance on alliances in parliament, and only around 40 per cent of the popular vote. In the middle of all this, the PPP looked increasingly like an ordinary, regionally defined party.

The PPP strategy, historically, has been simple. They put forward a right of centre liberal face when trying to convince people that they are a progressive alternative to the PML-N, and that they are an economically competent alternative to the PTI. Using their lack of power as an example of their commitment to honesty and integrity, the PPP is seen strengthening their anti-establishment credentials in comparison to a legacy of broken promises from the other parties in the hope of getting an electoral win. This strategy is completely and utterly dead in the water.

The PPP that Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto built on the ashes of Ayub Khan’s martial law regime may yet end up being the main beneficiary of Benazir Bhutto’s martyrdom. And it is far from clear that the next PPP leader could replicate Benazir’s success in nurturing the Bhutto base. These factors alone might revive the party slogan. But for how long?

For more than a half-century, the PPP thrived precisely because it stood for nothing other than sublimating the centrifugal forces that threatened to tear the feudal system apart. But it became progressively less good at it. Under Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, the PPP became the party of protectionism and populism on the campaign trail. But the last PPP-led coalition government was heavily plagued with corruption and inefficiency. Irrespective of how you feel about them, the National Accountability Bureau scandals have destroyed the PPP’s advantage on honesty. The very ambiguity that previously acted as a massive strategic asset is now their primary weakness, as swing voters do not trust them to keep out the people they want to keep out.

Everything that made the PPP as strategically successful as they were is gone, and the political climate dooms them to obscurity. For one, it continues to remain a political dynasty party, with a paranoid anti-establishment style of governance and development strategy. It is a party whose development vision is restricted to change and barriers to entry for newcomers, and whose leadership is surrounded by old time decision-makers who are still propagating political workers fighting against tyranny. This generation has lost appeal in “Roti, Kapra aur Makan” (Bread, clothing, shelter), and youth is refusing to buy the old wine that the PPP is trying to sell in the name of change. If anything the PPP leadership is jeopardising the political career of Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari by continuing to remain adamant in its approach. The PPP is dead as a major political party if they cannot recover in the short term, and they are doing nothing other than taking up space in the centre ground.

It would be like Lazarus; they would rise from the dead if Bilawal were to become that leader who can rejuvenate them when they are actually down and out, and it would be very highly divisive. The person who is most scared of Bilawal becoming a leader is Bilawal himself. The fundamental problem here is that nobody remotely believes that Bilawal could attain power. Under their leader, Bilawal, the party has to defy the political polarisation that had sought to make it unpopular.

Even if Bilawal achieves a minor miracle and finishes first in 2018 elections, it would hardly assure a PPP revival. Unlike the PTI, the PPP has a natural base and constituency. That leaves the PTI struggling to articulate its raison d’être and set of principles that comes naturally to parties of the right and left. The central idea of Bilawal’s campaign should involve a similar lurch to the left, with a nod to end corruption, and an uncompromising purge in the party, which, as history suggests, is not to say those promises would be kept. What the PPP does not want to do is repeat the mistake that they made in 2013, where some of that energy just kind of dissipated, and they were only playing an inside game. Though some fear that the PPP would compete to revive, pundits insist that the new leadership is designed not to win elections but to advance Asif Ali Zardari’s agenda. There may be more riding on Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari’s shoulders than he thinks.

The writer is a professor of psychiatry and consultant forensic psychiatrist in the UK. He can be contacted at fawad_shifa@yahoo.com