PPP’s last chance?

Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) formed in Lahore in 1967 by the country’s most popular leader, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, would be 50 years old on Nov 30, 2017. It has survived many difficult times in the last five decades, but the crisis today is both leadership as well as policy as the party is finding it hard to carry on dynastic politics after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.

Victory and defeat in elections is part of politics and nothing unusual in democracy. But if the party deviates from its basics, it fails to deliver, or faces leadership crisis, people go for the alternatives. This is what has happened to the PPP: it is not only losing leaders but also workers. Those who have not left the party are trying hard to convince the leadership to change its politics and approach, and it appears to be PPP’s battle for survival and its last chance to stage a comeback.

In 50 years time period, no other party but the PPP has faced all kinds of suppression, joint investigation teams (JITs), prisons, execution, exiles, and conspiracies to divide it. Over 50,000 party workers have faced cases, lashes, military courts and even hangings. Even its founder leader Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was also hanged. All this is unprecedented in the recent political history of the country.

However, post-Benazir Bhutto crisis is more or less self-inflicted. The party leadership will have to accept its failures that despite getting a chance it failed to deliver.

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), which has taken a lead as the major opposition party, is a far bigger challenge for the PPP and its politics today, than the one posed by the Pakistan Muslim League-N.

The PPP leadership still believes that the PML-N and the PTI battle in Punjab would go in its favour. This is the same mistake which it had committed in 2013, and lost the ground. The PTI is attracting the PPP workers and leaders, who find no more attraction in the party or its leadership and look towards Imran Khan, as an alternative, who has the capacity and courage to challenge the powerful Sharifs.

Bhutto is the only leader in the history of Pakistan who, after Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah, went so close to the people. His romance kept the party alive even four decades after his execution. What PPP fails to understand is that party could not survive on mere romance for long.

Irrespective of politics of former president, Asif Ali Zardari, through which he not only completed his full term in office and the PPP got all top positions, from president to PM, from NA speaker to Senate chairman, he failed as a leader in restoring the confidence of the people.

On the one hand, the PPP could not make any inroads into the middle class and change its politics, accordingly. On the other hand, it did nothing to retain the real strength of the party’s ideological basis and its original strength i.e. labourers, peasants, students, women and minorities.

It also failed in attracting the middle class by setting some good examples of governance, transparency, accountability and zero tolerance for corruption. It created job opportunities but faced heavy criticism for giving jobs without merit. For instance, in education and health sectors, its own leaders criticised their former ministers for massive irregularities distribution of jobs.

Imran Khan, who emerged as a strong leader of the middle class in the post-Benazir era and made inroads into politics due to infighting of the PPP and PML-N in the 1990s and charges of corruption against their leaders. He exploited the situation well and used the period of Zardari-led PPP government in his favour. The PPP leadership misjudged PTI’s popularity and thought it would damage the PML-N only in 2013 elections.

For the first time since 1970, if any leader created its own vote bank, over 60 per cent of which belongs to urban middle class, it is Imran Khan. Even people belonging to upper middle class and, what many call, the burger class became workers of the PTI. Both, the PPP and PML-N and even the MQM and Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) lost its middle class support to some extent.

It was Mr Zardari’s biggest miscalculation as a “political genius”. For the first time, the PPP was practically wiped out from Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. The difference between PPP’s defeat in 1997, when it was restricted to 17 National Assembly seats and in 2013, is the massive decline in PPP’s voting percentage.

There is no doubt that the PPP, as a secular and liberal voice, faced serious threats from Taliban in 2013 elections along with Awami National Party (ANP) and Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), and it did affect its campaign. The question is why its voters and courageous workers are not ready to come out now.

Benazir Bhutto’s assassination on Dec 27, 2007 was the turning point and for many reasons, the party could not recover since her murder. It still remains a big mystery as to who actually conspired to kill her and why, in its five years, the PPP government failed to expose the conspirators. Why the JIT on Benazir Bhutto murder remained inconclusive and why the key suspect was given red carpet farewell.

The PPP leaders and workers had not even recovered from the tragic loss of the BB when the party’s Central Executive Committee (CEC) announced Asif Ali Zardari as the chairman and very young Bilawal Bhutto Zardari as the co-chairman in haste, on the basis of what it claimed as the BB’s will.

If the PPP really wanted to survive as a national party, it needs to transform itself through democracy within the party. It has to review its own leadership and decide whether Asif Ali Zardari is the right choice to lead the party.

It is the best time for the PPP to transform itself and come out from dynastic politics. Had the party, and Zardari, not brought Bilawal into Pakistani politics in 2007 and groomed him for the 2013 or 2018 elections, he could have emerged as an alternative leader.

The PPP still has the capacity to go to masses with new programme, approach and politics, for which it has to seriously review the ‘Politics of Mr Zardari’, whether it has helped the party or damaged it.

It was shocking for me during an Iftar reception, hosted by PPP Karachi division for Bilawal Bhutto, that most of the top party leaders were not even aware that it is party’s Golden jubilee year. No wonder why in the last six months the party has not reviewed its politics.

PPP’s contribution to democracy is unmatched: from making the Constitution 1973 to giving provincial autonomy. Many attempts were made to divide the party, block its electoral victories through conspiracies. It has produced some of the best political minds, some of them are still fighting to convince its leadership to change its policies and politics. Many had  had left the party while others are on the waiting list. This may be the last chance for the PPP.

The writer is a senior columnist and analyst of Geo, The News and Jang.

Twitter: @MazharAbbasGEO

Article source: https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/210451-PPPs-last-chance