Double trouble and the promise of change

Now I feel doubly sorry for Imran Khan – on account of his domestic and political troubles. To begin with, his second marriage lasted less than a year. The marriage plan with Reham, which he ran concurrently with the dharna of D-Chowk, climaxed in a quick wedding at Bani Gala.
The ‘Hello’ and ‘Gala’ fraternity must have taken note of that not only on a regional but global scale. This was a marriage almost made in heaven as a Pakistani woman groomed in the west had finally arrived to be by Imran’s side as he prepared for new political battles.
As we know now, Reham was not prepared to play the role of a self-effacing supportive wife. She enjoyed being in the limelight and wanted to share the glory with Imran. She wanted too much too soon, goes the murmur. Without going into the chronology or choreography of the drama that came to an abrupt end before the local bodies polls, it can be said that the two had a nine-month rollercoaster ride. A star rose over the sky of Bani Gala and came down with a loud thud.
Media gurus have and will continue to fill in the details. For the rest of us, there is something of greater consequence that may have far-reaching impact on the PTI’s political fortunes. In the ongoing local bodies polls in Sindh and Punjab, the voters have overwhelmingly rejected Imran’s idea of a change from the two-party supremacy of politics, something he liked to call ‘muk-muka’ or fixed bouts of power. The support received by a very large number of independents returned in Punjab means that the masses are not really moved by the PTI’s promise of change.
The victory of the old guard in the local election may lead the PPP and PML-N to think that they can go about business as usual. The independents would by and large prefer to be accommodated by the two big parties, relegating the third option further down in their order of preference. All this – combined with the PTI’s lacklustre performance – is being interpreted as a bad omen for the future of the self-proclaimed party of change in the race for power in Punjab, and consequently in the general elections.
The PTI has started cribbing about electoral irregularities and the Punjab government’s ‘collusion’ with the independents. That, however, is an oversimplification of the complex power play at the local level. If Imran and his associates fail to understand the underlying factors, their politics is destined to greater failures in the period ahead. The most crucial among these is the utter lack of ideological considerations at the grassroots level. It is marked instead by a desire to succeed first and opt for a party latter. The corollary would be very few of the winners opting for parties other than the leading parties in Punjab as well as Sindh.
The most important lesson for the PTI from the local election is that the voters in Sindh and Punjab do not see the party of change winning any time soon and therefore preferring not to ‘waste’ their votes – also known as voting usefully. The reasons for this development are not hard to understand. The PTI failed to win most by-elections. It is also said that the party is not well-organised.
Imran was never a great orator and had to depend on props like music and sloganeering to cover the shortcomings in his speech. He failed to mobilise mass support beyond the educated urban classes.
Undoubtedly, Imran is surrounded by a number of former PPP and Muslim League figures including some from the Musharraf era. He addresses press conferences or public meetings flanked by many of them. The net result is the dissipation of his aura as a leader. There can be only one chief but the PTI appears as a whole group of chiefs, none of whom is prepared to be an ‘Indian’.
Reham, while she was there, took away some of the limelight. Imran is either too accommodating or is a weak leader. If he cannot rise above his lieutenants in his own party, that conveys his weakness to lead or govern.
The PPP too is going through organisational handicaps. To have a chairman and a co-chairman may settle family inheritance but is not conducive to winning elections on national level. Now that the voters have given the PPP a massive victory in the first phase of local polls in Sindh, will Asif Zardari start reasserting his primacy? Similar problems in India’s Congress Party cost it dearly in the last general elections.
Considering that two phases of the local polls are still pending, there should be no rush to write off the PTI. What it has achieved in the last three years should be acknowledged. Till now, it is the only force challenging the PML-N on its home turf. The PTI’s performance in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa will have an impact on its fortune in the next general elections.
The PTI and the PPP are now in the race to become the main opposition party at the national level. It is facile to attribute the PML-N’s success to organised rigging. Imran and Bilawal surely know that the PML-N is the most formidable political force in the largest province that makes or breaks governments at the federal level. Despite wrangling between some party stalwarts, the party’s command is firmly in the hands of the House of Sharif. It is not for them to lose but for others, including the PTI, to win Punjab.
Email: saeed.saeedk@gmail.com