The PPP’s wonderland

For a moment it appeared that the invisible Firdowsi had once again dipped his fingers in the red ink to add another chapter to the greatest epic of Pakistan’s short history. The battle cry was unmistakable, as fiery as one of the speeches of the rebellious angel, as narrated by John Milton or the poet of the east.
But unfortunately we are living in the age of mock epics, where hysterical television anchors are our Homers and Virgils and equally grand are our Odysseus’ and Rustams. As the smiling man thundered, his comrades echoed the call with sycophantic pleas and shameful alibis. It was a mere bluff after all, rescinded as soon as it was made – like a toy boomerang, thrown only to be caught back.
However, it gave some ageing supporters of the PPP, including yours truly, a rare moment of the adrenaline rush that usually comes with a slogan carrying the Bhutto name. Observing the party’s free fall into the bottomless pit of political oblivion, they know their beloved organisation badly needs something to cling on to – and needs it fast. Like Alice in the Wonderland, it has fallen quite a bit, slow in the beginning but with a dizzying speed now, and not much time is left before it lands on the soft ground of the magical world to enjoy the mad tea party ever after. Some may argue that the PPP is already there; look at the people Zardari Sahib, employing his fabulous sense of humour, has gathered in the Sindh government; the complete caste of Wonderland already there.
The PPP is no stranger to the establishment and vice versa. The party was born as a challenge to Pakistan’s first military dictator, the self-styled Field Marshal, General Ayub Khan. The foreign policy as defined by Bhutto, when he was Ayub’s foreign minister, remains the cornerstone of the establishment’s worldview with its centrality of the Kashmir issue and India as the arch enemy as well as close relationship with China and the Middle East. During his own democratic government, Bhutto further refined and strengthened these policies and added the nuclear policy to the list of the sacred tenets. No need to mention that he also doubled the size of Pakistan’s armed forces and raised the morale of the nation and its soldiers after the 1971 debacle.
Bhutto was hanged by the third military dictator and with him went the party he had founded. The party Benazir headed was, in many ways, founded by herself, this time as a democratic challenge to Zia’s tyranny. In Max Weber’s terms, BB was able to routinise or transfer her father’s charisma to herself and legitimise her claim to the party’s leadership. In turn, Benazir’s PPP ended with her at the Liaquat Bagh, under the gaze of the fourth military dictator, and the burden fell upon her husband to give it a new birth. Political parties die and are reborn in this way all over the world. In more democratic systems, such change in political parties is steered through internal democracy and a regular change of guard. In their case, the charisma, to a large extent, is vested in the office and not in the bloodline of the leadership. In less democratic and more traditional societies, charisma often needs a blood line to routinise or get transferred downwards. Without a charismatic person at the top, a political party may wither and die.
To be fair, Zardari was handed an impossible job. In our culture, husbands or sons-in-law do not carry the charisma of their wives or fathers in law. (Sorry Captain Sahib!) It is not only Weberian sociology that was against him, public opinion was not up his alley either. Zardari was one of the most maligned persons in Pakistan’s history when he took over, though it is hard to decide whether he is more sinning or sinned against. During the two decades of his married life, he was the favourite punching bag of those who wanted to target his celebrated wife but found her a hard target.
After taking over the reins of the party, Zardari made some impressive achievements: he kept the party together, won an election, forged unlikely alliances, watched over the passage of the 18th Amendment and eased out Pervez Musharraf from the presidency. In more flattering terms, he proved himself a leaders’ leader, much like Chaudhary Shujaat Hussain. There was a time when Pakistan’s fledgling democracy and democratic transition needed a person like him to forge a democratic consensus. The party, however, needed a charismatic, popular leader and suffered terribly from the absence of such a person. Imran Khan became the main beneficiary of the absence of a charismatic leader at the top of the PPP, and with a bit of hand-holding established himself as an alternative to Nawaz Sharif and the PML-N.
Asif Ali Zardari was the party’s most gruelling baggage during BB’s tenure. In its third incarnation, as co-chairperson of the party, he became the millstone around its neck. The party has reached a situation where its rivals have not only stolen its voters buts its slogans as well. Realising the decline of the Left globally, Benazir had already redefined the party’s ideological direction. However, she was able to successfully articulate the sentiments of the working classes and keep the link alive - at least at a symbolic level. It was a party that stood for the poor and the marginalised: for peasants and workers, for women and minorities and for the geographical regions neglected by the state.
In the absence of the PPP, the poor have lost all voice and politics has become a plaything of the middle class. Let me hasten to add here that the middle class in Pakistan is not the middle class in economic terms but only a social or socio-economic category representing, in economic terms, according to the ADB, the topmost 7.33 percent of the population with an income of $4 a day or more (minus the rich’s one or two percent). It is a club of the self-righteous angels who milk all privileges, refuse to pay taxes and remain locked in a love-hate relationship with the ruling elite one notch above them, angry at their motorcades but failing to see the gap between their Corollas and the poor man’s khoti.
Under Zardari, the PPP became worse than the two other alternatives as it came to represents the interests of a small section of the elite, not even of the so-called middle class. In socio-economic terms, today’s PPP represents the status quo more than the other two parties. Its bad governance in Sindh has seriously harmed the interests of the poor whose only hope for upward mobility lies in investment in human development and effective governance of the institutions that can deliver it. Report after report from credible development sector organisations show the abysmal condition of health and education in the province. As the joke goes, the PPP’s new slogan is: “Marsoon marsoon, Sindh koon taleem na daisoon” (We will die but will not educate Sindh). Sindhis are condemned to enjoy more of it as the party sinks to the level of a Sindhi ethnic party, the last straw it can clutch upon for some more time.
The vulture must die for the phoenix to be born and the old must give way to the new. The greatest favour in this regard can come from the establishment. If not, Aurangzeb Alamgir can be a good model for Bilawal to follow. The Mughal king must have read memoirs of his great grandfather, Babar, who had noted: “We, the kings, have no relatives”.
Bilawal can also take a leaf or two out of his mother’s diary to learn the art of the princes. He needs to realise sooner than later that phuphos must go the way uncles went in BB’s case and Abbu must be eased out as Ammi’s ammi was retired.
Email: zaighamkhan@yahoo.com
Twitter: @zaighamkhan