PPP — changing bottles, not the wine

The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) seems busy setting up shop all over the country, especially in the areas where it had appeared to have lost its business. The public events in Punjab and Kashmir indicate that the party leadership is getting ready to make relative gains in case it is faced with early elections. Such an assessment is not based on the turnout at the rallies (these days parties ranging from the JUI-F and the PTI to the JI, PML-N and the PPP have all mastered the art of drawing crowds at rallies) but the fact that it has made amends with the country’s permanent establishment. Just like vultures smell death, most political parties including the PPP are geared to ensure that the government falls and it pounces on the carcass to claim its pound of flesh.

Much as a segment of the liberal elite feel energised at the prospects of, what they consider as sparks of life in a party considered as the last bastion of progressive-liberalism in Pakistan, the fact of the matter is that the PPP has nothing to offer but pragmatism. It is not a left-centric party but a new reincarnation in which power is more central to its thinking than ideology. This is despite the fact that a few good people have been brought back to life and the new leader, Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari has sought opinion from opinion-makers and party jiyalas regarding what has gone wrong with the PPP and how it can be corrected. Perhaps, he really intends to put the PPP back on track but his recent game plan does not indicate that.



Looking at Bilawal’s politics, it seems that he is less of a mix of idealist-pragmatist which his mother was during at least her first premiership and more of a pragmatist in the mould of his father Asif Ali Zardari. Notwithstanding the fact that a lot of people welcome and cheer him because he is Benazir Bhutto’s child, he is gradually proving himself to be more of his father’s son, or a Benazir Bhutto who signed the NRO.

Consider his and his party’s recent performance in Kashmir. The two main issues that the young Zardari touched upon in Kotli, Kashmir pertained to foreign policy objectives and corruption. Pounding the air around him with a hard fist he promised to restore the traditional foreign policy. Indirectly, he regurgitated the older Bhutto’s ‘thousand years of war with India’ philosophy. The promise he made to the Kashmiris of making them centre stage had nothing to do with improving their condition but to keep using them for fighting a battle of state egos between two neighbours. Listening to Bilawal speak was as if Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had given birth to Benazir, who in turn had given birth to a mix of her father and her son’s father — hawkish, compromising and power hungry. It had taken a lot of courage and foresight for the Benazir Bhutto elected in 1988 to not just challenge the establishment but to also abandon the foreign policy that promised to keep Pakistan’s permanent establishment permanently powerful and in control. She was the one who reached out to Rajiv Gandhi and jointly attempted to stabilise the region then. We have to consider that the options that there are to deal with India, other than through military means, do not compromise the rights of the Kashmiri people. They have a lot to gain through interaction with their own kind from across the border. The Kashmiri youth, like their counterparts from the rest of Pakistan, deserve better economic and development opportunities that are not on offer at the moment. To tell these people that they and rest of the country will gain by conducting relations with India according to the traditional formula is a disservice.



Now that Bilawal has purposely surrounded himself with establishment-friendly people, there is no one to tell him that inciting people against a government which hopes to improve relations with India is certainly not what his late mother would have considered wise. Perhaps, the new PPP, which no longer represents Benazir Bhutto, is driven more by personal interests of its rulers to save their empire in Sindh. Indeed, the power centre now has the former Bhutto and new Zardari party by its throat. Thus, it is willing to make compromises even on issues that it set out to change. Wasn’t it the PPP which was close to granting India the MFN status in 2011? Or is it that Dr Asim’s detention for a few months was a sufficient lesson to reverse policies?

As for the promise to eradicate corruption, did Bilawal ever think that such a slogan coming from him doesn’t make a lot of sense, especially when said in the company of bulk of the existing party leadership? He only has to look at how the party made its selections in Kashmir and the kind of people it selected for the Kashmir Council and for the elections in Kashmir to figure out whether his anti-corruption promises make any sense. Did Bilawal, his father or aunt select people based on their commitment and association to the party or on the size of their pocket? Has anyone ever told the young man, who now seeks people’s opinion about ways to redesign the PPP, how the party jiyalas opposed the selection of people nominated by Faryal Talpur for the Kashmir Council? They had considered the selections to be in contravention of the party’s progressive ideology. Will he ever learn that some of the tickets in Kashmir were given not based on principles but to those close to the permanent power centre and those who had deep pockets?



In case he is serious about finding out what’s really wrong with his party, it is financial, political and intellectual corruption, which must be eradicated if there is a real intent to revive any idealism in the PPP. There are workers who wonder if the party leadership is even interested in keeping the PPP intact. Not only that, the credibility of the top leadership is doubtful and the years of realpolitik seem to have corrupted many of the workers as well. Sadly, there is nothing new about the PPP except that its leadership is trying to brand old wine as new just by pouring it in a new bottle. It’s all about power and personal greed than people and ideology.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 12^th, 2016.

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