The PPP: a tragic tale

Watching the Pakistan People’s Party over the past year has been tragic. The slow degeneration of the political party that carried the hopes of the working people of Pakistan has come as a shock. The PPP inspired hope, first, under Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto during the 1970s, and then under his daughter Benazir Bhutto after the end of the General Zia period. Even the PPP under Asif Ali Zardari was able to show political maturity to complete five years in government and get the much-lauded 18th Amendment passed. However, the ‘make-no-enemies’ policy of the Zardari period has now brought the party towards an internal impasse. In a period when the rise of the PTI has brought back the politics of confrontation to the country, the PPP has come off as too eager to please everyone. After a year of many internal issues, including the tussle between Zardari and Zulfiqar Mirza, questions over Bilawal’s maturity and a rather poor performance in the local bodies elections and in Gilgit-Baltistan, news emerged last week that a number of high-profile defections were set to take place. The crisis management skills of the PPP’s top leadership failed to avert the matter as the media reported that the first batch of PPP stalwarts have left the party to join the PTI.
The defections included former minister of state for information Samsam Bokhari and a number of ex-MPAs from the traditional PPP stronghold, Okara. In a short statement for the media, Bokhari claimed that it was Asif Zardari’s policy of conciliation with the PML-N that had made the party redundant in politics. PTI insiders have claimed that more politicians from the PPP and PML-Q are set to join the PTI soon. The crisis in the PPP’s Punjab chapter is said to have started after the appointment of Manzoor Wattoo as its president in October 2012. The defections have come at a bad time for Zardari, who has already been facing pressure over his recent outburst against the military. His statements, which seemed to have been an attempt to regenerate the PPP, appear to have failed to inspire any confidence in the party’s disillusioned rank and file. The Punjab PPP feels that the party is overall happy to remain in power in Sindh while it has left Punjab as a battlefield between the PTI and the PML-N. On Thursday, Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari summoned Wattoo for a meeting to discuss the defections. But Wattoo appears to be at the heart of the problem, having claimed a day ago that Bokhari would not defect. There is an element of mystery to why the country’s largest, and electorally most significant province, was not fought for harder. The PPP appears clueless on how to re-establish itself as a national party. With PPP senators still showing great maturity in taking up issues of national importance in the Senate, there may still be hope that the party can chart a new path for itself. For now, neither Bilawal nor Zardari appear to have any coherent strategy to breathe new life into the PPP machine.