Time to reboot

PPP is in need of a re-boot of its hard drive, but on the evidence of the April 26 rally, that is a distant prospect

The politics of symbology was on display on April 26 when the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) held a rally at the Kakri Ground in Lyari. The party has yet to recover from the drubbing that it took in the 2013 elections, and there is a sense that the PPP brand has lost both its way and lustre. This was to a degree acknowledged by the party co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari who addressed the crowd nearly 30 years after he celebrated his marriage to Benazir Bhutto on almost the same spot. His son, Bilawal, is currently undergoing ‘re-education’ in London having had a disastrous launch into the political arena, and his sister Aseefa is now spoken of as the person to carry forward the dynastic torch. Mr Zardari said that it is time to bring in new blood to make new leaders — and he is right. The political magic had not entirely deserted him as he addressed the crowd but the people who were the constituents of the PPP, have. In droves.

The PPP held its first rally convened by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, again on almost the same spot in 1967. Since then, it has been on a political roller coaster. Roller coasters by their very nature have ups and down, and the ‘down’ that the PPP is experiencing is very much a problem of its own making. Dynasties are not forever, and neither are they consistent in terms of the quality of those who find themselves at the top of the dynastic tree. They tend to be both inwards-looking and as time goes by increasingly inbred. They are rooted in a receding past and old glories, and once they reach a tipping point are doomed. It is too early to say that the PPP as currently constituted is doomed, but it is severely weakened and its poor showing in the cantonment board elections was merely a reiteration of the message delivered by the voters in 2013. The party is in urgent need of a re-boot of its hard drive, but on the evidence of the April 26 rally, that is a distant prospect.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 28^th,  2015.

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