The party’s not yet over

Sfter almost half a century, the PPP is still not over, as its detractors had wished, despite the party losing its shine and raison d’être. As a relic of the past, it is ether struck in its glorious and tragic past or is not finding its way under the third-generation Bhutto – and under the watchful tutelage of the party’s post-Benazir Bhutto pragmatist custodian, Asif Ali Zardari. The question is: What does the PPP stand for now and can it still make a useful difference in the future?

Not having a substantial message for the future, the advertisement that the PPP ran on its 49th Foundation Day took refuge in the grandiose of its illustrious past. The humanist metamorphosis of its left-leaning populism under its founding chairman, which it found under Benazir Bhutto, lost its way in the comforts of its pragmatist caretaker AAZ’s successful power games at the cost of popular politics.

Consequently, a rhetorical Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari is finding it hard to balance between the two conflicting legacies – BB’s progressive democratic humanist idealism and Zardari’s anti-popular pragmatism. Unlike his charismatic mother, who transformed Bhutto’s masculine populist authoritarianism into a feminist social-humanism, the third-generation Bhutto-Zardari continues to flounder while making his cosmetic choices.

It is time to look back on the conflicting history of Bhutto’s populism for a party that has lost the ideological justification for its survival beyond the feudal backyards of Sindh.

Indeed, accompanied by strong socialist movements, the progressive, and often ambiguous, populism of the sixth and seventh decades of the 20th century gave birth to the Bhuttos of the time when the world was ideologically, systematically and strategically divided between two opposite poles. Populism, as a variant of a mixture of nationalism and socialism, dominated many of the so-called third world countries fighting neo-colonialism. Bhutto captured the centre-stage of the popular youth and working peoples’ upsurge of the 60s with his populist slogans that appealed to the masses and left-oriented intelligentsia.

Focusing on the social stratification caused by Ayub Khan’s 22-families’ Harvard model of growth, Bhutto built a grand coalition of landed aristocracy, rural poor and urban working and middle classes against the comprador bourgeoisie. As is the character of populism elsewhere, his ideology was confusing. It flirted with socialism and nationalism, on the one hand, and Islamic universalism and anti-India chauvinism, on the other. Strangely enough, even though Bhutto gave a national security state its strategic paradigm, the garrison didn’t spare a popular challenger who was – in that respect – its ideological guru.

The PPP got its second metamorphosis – first, under Begum Nusrat Bhutto and later more clearly by a more charismatic Benazir Bhutto – during the reactionary and brutal military dictatorship of General Ziaul Haq. It was during this period that the PPP passed through a qualitative democratisation in its valiant resistance to militaristic authoritarianism and jihadist Islamism. Soon, there was a global shift that emerged on the debris of the Soviet Union and the emergence of uni-polar globalisation. In the post-communism period and with the emergence of Thatcherism and the neo-liberal Washington consensus, BB shifted from bureaucratic state-socialism to private-public partnership, and shed the ultranationalist and Islamist authoritarian traits of what is popularly known as Bhuttoism.

Coincidentally, the pro-Bhutto, anti-Bhutto political divide was transformed into a pro-Zia and anti-Zia polarisation. The charismatic BB transformed the PPP in her own popular democratic image.

After learning her lessons from her two aborted governments and faced with yet another authoritarian but moderate military regime, Benazir Bhutto focused on how to make the PPP a party of the centre-left with a moderate social-democratic agenda primarily focusing on the PPP’s traditional mass constituency among the poor masses as the urban middle classes overwhelmingly shifted to the religious right. BB gave a new ideological cause to the PPP – of reconciliation between civilisations as opposed to the ‘clash of civilisations’, and provided social-humanist orientation as an alternative to religious extremism/terrorism.

BB abhorred the anti-India chauvinism and militarism that the elder Bhutto espoused. On the premise of liberal-democracy and secularism, she formulated her new social agenda while taking on terrorism and extremism. If Bhutto became a victim of his populist nationalism at the hands of the ultra-right militaristic regime, BB sacrificed her life in her struggle against religious extremism and terrorism. In her martyrdom, she gave the PPP its new ideological metamorphose – radical social humanism.

But soon the PPP lost its course as Zardari extended BB’s theory of reconciliation among civilisations to reconciliation among the ruling classes or ideological adversaries. Hence, the party lost its ideological distinction and was reduced to a party of feudal elites interested in rent-seeking and pilferage, as epitomised by its two ill-reputed prime ministers and the Sindh government.

The world is again changing with the emergence of Donald Trump and the rise of ultra-nationalism in Europe. Globalisation and the neo-liberal Washington consensus are in tatters and the Muslim world is deeply struck in its sectarian, fratricidal bloody atomisation. Pakistan is passing through a struggle for survival at the hands of terrorism/sectarianism and a warrior state not reconcilable with its neighbours as well as an international community at war with terrorism amid increasing Islamophobia.

A huge demographic change has made us a country of the youth – without education and opportunities. Despite a selective war on terrorism, the predominant narrative is informed by a sectarian and extremist narrative reinforced by an external threat – both from India and the West. In the meanwhile, yet another political divide has emerged – anti-Nawaz and pro-Nawaz or between Punjab and the smaller provinces.

As a variety of conservative and extremist ideologies dominate the political discourse, Bilawal has fortunately taken an enlightened democratic stance on various issues. But by taking a jingoist nationalist line to appease a warrior state, he undermines the civil society and democracy he is trying to bolster. With Sindhi feudal lords running Sindh as their private estate, Bilawal can neither attract the moderate sections of the middle classes and the apolitical youth, nor represent a progressive democratic alternative to a moderately social conservative and neo-liberal modernist Nawaz Sharif.

Both the PPP and the PML-N are seen by a large number of the youth as parties of the old regime, representing the divides of yesteryears. This apathy of the middle class and the youth towards the parties of the old regime has given a boost to yet another populism – Imran Khan’s – that is ideologically pro-Taliban and socially liberal. Copying Bhutto’s or BB’s imagery and style won’t help Bilawal much, nor will the superficial changes that he is making going to change the PPP’s tarnished image.

Bilawal has to unburden himself from the baggage of the recent past, redefine the PPP’s neo social-democratic agenda for the 21st century, pursue a policy of peace with neighbours and become the spokesman of the civil society while winning the youth and reviving the PPP’s traditional constituencies among the poor, and distancing the party from feudal landlords and those known for rabid corruption. He doesn’t have any choice except redefining his behest in terms of a centre-left party or leaving it to his father who can still make a good use of it in the traditional power games. BB had to let go of her fossilised uncles to emerge as a leader in her own right. Can Bilawal dare let go of the baggage to make his own imprint as a progressive democrat?

The writer is a senior journalist.

Email: imtiaz.safma@gmail.com

Twitter: @ImtiazAlamSAFMA