Bilawal in Punjab

Bilawal Bhutto Zardari’s foray into Punjab serves a dual purpose: to ramp up the pressure on Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif over the Panama Papers and re-establish the PPP as a force to be reckoned with in the country’s most populous province. He is unlikely to succeed in either task. On Tuesday, Bilawal began his rally from Lahore to Faisalabad by declaring he had arrived to end the reign of the Sharif family and promising to hold them accountable for this alleged corruption. The PPP protest was spurred after the government ignored its four demands – the revival of parliament’s national security committee, acceptance of a PPP bill on the Panama Papers, the appointment of a foreign minister and the implementation of a resolution on the CPEC passed at an All-Parties Conference. Despite Bilawal’s assertion that the government will fall soon, none of these demands is likely to rouse the people of Punjab against the PML-N. Imran Khan has established himself as the loudest anti-government voice in the country and Bilawal seems to be attempting to assume the mantle. However, there may be as many pitfalls in such a strategy for the PPP as there have been for others.

The reception Bilawal receives in Punjab should be an indicator of whether the party is ready to once again compete electorally in the province. Here, too, the real target of the PPP may be the PTI and not the PML-N. The ruling party’s monopoly in the province seems unbreachable and the PTI is far ahead of everyone else in the race for second. The PPP will want to establish itself as the main opposition in the province and hopefully pick up a few seats in the province too. Over the last five years, the PPP seemed to have given up any hope of recapturing its previous stronghold in southern Punjab and became completely irrelevant in the rest of the province. Bilawal is clearly hoping some of the Benazir magic will rub off on him, which is why he is travelling in a truck used by his late mother. But symbolism alone will not do the trick for the PPP. Neither will aping the protest strategy of the PTI. All that shows is that Imran Khan is better than Bilawal at drawing large, passionate crowds in Punjab. What the PPP needed to do was to concentrate on the unglamourous work of rebuilding the grassroots organisation. Ignoring that has cost the party the opportunity of being relevant again in Punjab. What the PPP cannot overlook, though, is that it cannot get anywhere in Punjab without sorting out its lifelessness in its home base of Sindh.