That’s what’s wrong with the opposition!

When last week I wrote that two men, Asif Ali Zardari and Shahbaz Sharif, had brought their respective parties to their knees I had little idea that the opposition leader in the National Assembly, who has often taken leave of absence from the assembly and corruption investigations on health grounds, would brave the long journey to Karachi and meet the former president. But there he was, surrounded by his party colleagues meeting Asif Zardari, who was accompanied by his son Bilawal and the Chief Minister of Sindh among many others.

We do not know what prompted Sharif’s visit to Karachi and what exactly was on the agenda but we have some idea why Zardari would warmly welcome his guests. He and his sister Faryal Talpur, perhaps the only soul closer to his heart than any, are to be indicted in the money laundering case by an accountability court on the 9^th of this month. Apparently, self-preservation is the only cause that matters to the opposition’s agenda-setters these days.

Asif Zardari’s whole life is a tragic tale of the pursuit of self-preservation and reductive and diminutive grand designs. Scion of a so-called feudal family gone broke, deficient in sound educational qualifications, with a head full of misplaced notions about how the elite ought to behave in society and spoilt by the company of equally inadequate friends, when he married Benazir Bhutto and she became the prime minister it was clear that he was incapable of telling right from wrong. We hear rumours of a fateful meeting in which Zardari allegedly tried to convince his late wife that with ultra-rich competitors like Nawaz Sharif the only way to survive politically was to indulge in financial corruption. With little evidence to substantiate these rumours, we can treat them merely as apocryphal claims. I bring it up because even though Benazir’s father was accused of many things, financial corruption was not one of them. And if something later shifted in the party’s outlook, he cannot be disassociated from it.

If Zardari was a political liability to Benazir and her party, briefly after her assassination he proved to be the party’s key asset. He assumed leadership of the party, opposed an indefinite delay in the elections, refused to nominate Amin Fahim, the party leader dangerously close to General Musharraf, as PM, worked with Nawaz’s party to remove the former dictator from power and restored the Constitution nearly to its original shape through the 18^th Amendment. But then power went to his head. While many claim that he was the first president who willingly returned power to the parliament he never lost the real power. He was simultaneously the head of his party and the country’s president. After the changes brought about by the 18^th Amendment a party chief could easily unseat any member of parliament who went against the party’s agenda set by him.

If he was later surrounded by sycophants and yes-men the real stalwarts were regularly ridiculed by the former president. A new elite was rising within the party at the cost of the old policy hands based primarily on its proximity to Zardari. Almost all of them, from Zulfiqar Mirza to Dr Asim, from Uzair Baloch to Sharjeel Memon, would bring great grief to the party. But the most significant growth was of Zardari’s sister Faryal Talpur, who was often shunned by Benazir. Talpur would enter parliament contesting from Benazir’s home seat. When Bilawal returned to the country demanding that he be allowed to contest from the very constituency his aunt and father refused to vacate it. Talpur would travel within Sindh with full presidential protocol.

The generation before us, Zardari’s generation, was often accused of favouring siblings over their own children. In Zardari’s case, it was on full display. The time in power that the former president enjoyed was essentially borrowed in Bilawal’s name. When Benazir was assassinated and Zardari had returned to the country he had promised to act as the regent until Bilawal came of age. You can criticise dynastic politics but if it were a choice between a young man raised and moulded by Benazir and a man who had been her biggest liability throughout her career the matter was a no-brainer. When Bilawal returned to the country after completing his education his regent would not let go of levers of power only because it meant taking power away from his sister and his own ‘friends’. Bilawal was constantly infantilised by his father. As malicious rumours spread about the young leader’s personal life, many were convinced that they could trace them back to Zardari’s own circles.

Perpetual insecurities, a worldview mostly shaped by his prolonged stay in jail, a desire to mimic MQM’s old street tactics and sudden exposure to power which was not earned but accidentally given meant that Zardari would leave little social or political capital for his party in his path of self-aggrandisement. His governance model, egotistic fights, inability to sustain his gains or sacrifices of his predecessors all speak volumes about his ability. The two premiers he chose (Yousuf Raza Gilani and Pervaiz Ashraf), a CM for Sindh (Qaim Ali Shah) and a CM for Balochistan (Aslam Raisani) show he deliberately wanted his party’s governments to look incoherent.

But his gradual poisoning of Bilawal’s career is the real act of sabotage to his party. Today many wonder why a party that was founded in Lahore has lost so badly in Pakistan’s most populous province that it can’t even find good candidates. Many attribute it to the use of the so-called Sindh card. Interestingly, before Zardari entered Benazir’s life there was little mention of this card. The People’s Party was considered a federal party and Sindhi symbols the proud emblems of Pakistaniyat. But before his party left power Zardari used its final days to propose the division of Punjab. This from a party which gesticulates angrily if you ever dare to talk about the need for the creation of an urban Sindh province. Like that would go down well with your voters. If you hold a referendum in Southern Punjab you might be surprised to note that hardly anyone cares. The region is poor because of its extractive feudal elite. The creation of a province would only institutionalise and consolidate that elite’s power. Zardari is loath to the idea of local governments, the only effective way to improve governance and undermine the exploitative elite.

By retaining the party’s power (he and not Bilawal is the party’s head that has a presence in parliament) and constantly undermining Bilawal for narrow self-interest, Zardari has destroyed the potential of a promising party and promising young leader. After the APS Peshawar incident, Bilawal could play an effective role in bringing the focus back to the fight against terror and could have rebuilt his party’s mass appeal. But Zardari quickly pushed him aside to take all the credit which he could not sustain because of his fit of rage after the arrest of Dr Asim. Even today he uses the party’s clout only for personal benefit and will not let go until the party and the career of his son are finished. That’s what’s wrong with the opposition.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 5^th, 2020.

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