A tale of three rallies: Lions and tigers and toy planes, oh my!

Two rallies competed for the attention of the Zinda-Dilan-e-Lahore last week. Who won the contest?

“Now this is what I call an awaami jalsa, look at how happy people are here,” says a stall vendor selling ice cream outside the Minar-e-Pakistan, where I had just arrived to cover the PTI’s first major political gathering in Lahore. “I was there at the PML-N rally two days ago as well to sell ice cream” he continues as he hands a cone to a waiting rally goer, ‘’That was a sarkari jalsa, completely state-sponsored.  This is the real thing,” he concludes as choc bars change hands. People are flooding in from all sides like a human tide, coming in small groups of twos and threes, and it’s clear that they aren’t being led to the rally by local party leaders, but are there because they want to be there. I leave the ice-cream man to tend his business and move on; despite the first chill of winter in the air, there’s no doubt he’ll be doing brisk business tonight.

It takes me an hour just to push through the crowd and get to the stage, where my press card (also my ‘get out of jail free’ card) allows me to stand in the back of the stage. Of course, I wasn’t the only newshound out there, and the queue of journalists was a very long one indeed. Still, the wait did give me the opportunity to listen in on the awaam. ‘Pervez Rasheed should resign,” says a man with a PTI flag painted on his cheek. “He was going on and on this morning saying Imran Khan would not even be able to attract 50,000 people.”  His companion laughs, saying “he should come and look at the crowd!’ While he speaks, he sweeps his hand to indicate the crowd, accidentally swatting someone on the head. Apologies are made and the debate continues, but it’s not just the participants who are getting into the numbers game.

Government and security officials are also out in force, but managing security is only one of their concerns. Most are here to compile reports on the rally for their respective department heads, and exactly how many people are in attendance is a hot topic of debate.

One officer from the Special Branch says he has to be careful while quoting attendance figures here since he is already under pressure ever since he reported that only 35,000 people came to the PML-N rally two days ago. “My superiors were unhappy,” says the unfortunate officer. “They said I should have consulted them since the Punjab government was not pleased with such a low figure at their rally.” Another official on duty ,who is talking over the phone with the Intelligence Bureau, says the IB will quote a higher figure here since it is a federal agency and it wants Imran Khan’s rally to scare the Punjab Govt. “The IB says there are 90,000 plus people here so far,” he says as he gets off the phone. “But I have to keep the figure low since I belong to the Punjab police. I won’t go over 60,000 since that’s what will suit my superiors in the report.’ As he continues, he is cut short by another security official who says “the media is showing the real attendance. No matter what the reports say, there is a flood of people here and that is the truth.” It seems Imran Khan is clearly winning this debate, I think to myself. Once behind the stage, the topic and conclusions were much the same, but this time the words were being spoken by senior security and intelligence officials who cannot be named.

Go back two days to the PML-N rally, and the scenario was quite different. It may be unfair to compare the two, due to difference in the numbers, the mood and the energy of the attendees, but since I had been to both, a mental comparison was inevitable.

Firstly, at the PML-N rally there was a sense of discipline. But not in the crowd’s attitude, since there were some fights which to me reflected a general frustration that usually is a result of forced participation. The discipline at the Sharif show was in the way the participants were assembled. There was a clear demarcation between each group entering the rally from Nasir Bagh towards Bhatti Chowk, where the stage had been set up. Each of these groups had two individuals holding a banner in front of them as they marched towards Bhatti Chowk. And all the banners were pretty much the same:  the ‘Go Zardari Go’ slogan was there with a mention of the constituency the group belonged to. It almost had the feel of national teams assembling for the Olympics, walking behind the flag-bearer. Roughly 20 to 30 groups were brought in as early as 1 pm, an hour before the designated time for the rally.

The march had to be taken out from the end of Mall Road where the Chief Minister house is, and for him it should have been all about getting out of his residence and joining the rally. Despite that, he came in 4 hours late, finally arriving in a car and speeding his way to the stage, which was heavily guarded with police officers all around. More policemen were posted on the rooftops of nearby buildings, and a bullet proof glass for the protection of the political elite sitting on the elevated stage. The PML-N elite, including Chaudhry Nisar and many others, sat upon the stage, but the list of political heavyweights did not end with these known faces. Elected parliamentarians were in the crowd itself, leading groups of men and women to the venue. Most of the rally-goers that I spoke to were from the outskirts of Lahore, usually from the rural areas of Shahdara, Sheikhupura and villages from border area. “They haven’t given us food or even water to drink,” complained Nasreen, an old woman who was leaving even before Shahbaz Sharif arrived. “We have been waiting for hours and I cannot stay any longer.” With many participants leaving before their leader even spoke, it seemed clear that they were not there by choice in the first place. And that fact was proven by the attendance registers that some of the party workers were carrying, busily ticking off the names of attendees.

There was another stark difference between the two rallies as well, in terms of the expression of creativity by the participants.

Shahbaz Sharif’s gathering had clowns hired by the organisers to entertain people, and inflated and stuffed tigers handed out to participants. Some people went a step further and brought real and very uncomfortable looking tigers and lions, who were caged and placed in trucks.  Speakers blared party songs, extolling a political dynasty in the making and calling Hamza Shahbaz the ‘Tiger of Punjab’. A good show, but one we’ve seen many times before.

At Imran’s jalsa, there was more of a family festival atmosphere, with people getting their faces painted and sporting home-made badges and stickers, all of which were different from one another. These show that there was no concerted effort by party apparatus to design, print and then distribute the rally paraphernalia, but rather that these were largely spontaneous and individual efforts. Missing were the local party leaders/organisers and professional sloganeers that are de rigueur at rallies. Despite that, the crowd seemed to discipline itself, with youngsters giving up their seats for more elderly rally goers. And while there were no animals, stuffed or otherwise, one participant did bring in a remote controlled plane that had the PTI flag tied to its tail as it kept circling over the crowds for hours.

And the music played here was quite different too. Shahbaz Sharif stuck to the Habib Jalib poetry that he has been repeating regularly, choosing to voice the words of a revolutionary poet who was arrested several times during Ziaul Haq’s regime (ironically at a time when Nawaz Sharif himself was a member of the government). He effectively directed the protest poetry that was intended for a military ruler at President Zardari, but it’s an open question as to how much Jalib resonates with the young voters of today. If the youth were the target of Shahbaz’s message to begin with, that is.

Over at the PTI rally, it was the youth that ruled the roost, and it was their music that had centre stage. Singers like Shahzad Roy and Strings belted out patriotic tune suited for a new generation, one that was out in force. I met with students as young as 16 and 17, who had forced their parents to come to the rally. Alena Tahir, who had never been to a political gathering before was there with her friends and her parents, who confessed they had been dragged along by her. Wearing a scarf dyed in PTI colours, she says she believes Imran Khan is the change we need today. ‘I got registered as a voter this week, and I forced my brother and cousins to do the same because we want to vote for PTI,’ added a beaming Alena. Another Lahori college student from LUMS who had also been to the PML-N rally summed it up: “I do not support the PML-N anymore,” said 22 year old Ahsan Fayyaz. “Shahbaz Sharif had forced government employees to attend the rally, and it was pretty obvious that they were not regular Lahoris,” he complained. “Imran Khan has a lot more support even though he does not have a single seat in the assemblies. Look around you, attracting a crowd of over 100,000 means people want him.’

Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, November 6^th,  2011.