PML-N rally in Larkana

For PML-N to have a shot at competing in Sindh, it will require months of campaigning and organising on the ground.

At a time when the PPP government is clearly vulnerable, PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif decided to venture into enemy territory. His rally at Larkana, transparently meant to challenge the PPP on its home turf, was loaded with symbolism and rhetoric, but was woefully inadequate in presenting a positive case that would convince even the most disenchanted Sindhi to switch to his party. Decked out in Sindhi topi and ajrak, Nawaz audaciously tried to claim the Benazir mantle for himself, forgetting that the two leaders had been at each other’s throats for the best of two decades and that the Charter of Democracy he signed with her was a marriage of convenience designed to get the two exiled leaders back home. He also said that President Zardari shouldn’t be leading the PPP since he wasn’t a true Bhutto, a claim which, if indeed Nawaz believes to be true, seems to imply that the PPP should be the personal toy of the Bhutto family. It would have been smarter politics for Nawaz to denounce the PPP co-chairman as a hereditary leader who usurped and then sidelined diehard jiyalas who had tirelessly given their all to the party.

Equally curious was Nawaz’s claim that on his first day in office he would have the killers of Benazir arrested. Since this means that he obviously doesn’t buy into the narrative that Benazir was assassinated by militants, Nawaz might want to spell out who exactly he plans to incarcerate. The case against former president Pervez Musharraf has always rested on negligence, not on ordering the trigger pulled. Nawaz also blasted the PPP government for only giving flood victims Rs20,000 per family, and not Rs100,000 as he had wanted. The sentiment is an admirable one, but it comes crashing against financial realities. The PML-N has made a lot of noise about rejecting US aid and doing without IMF bailouts, so he will have to explain where this money will materialise from.

The reason Nawaz Sharif had to rely so heavily on the Benazir card in Larkana is that he knows that Pakistan’s politics are provincially entrenched. One speech on its own, no matter how impressive the turnout, will do nothing to change that. For the PML-N to have a shot at competing in Sindh, it will require months of campaigning and organising on the ground.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 13^th, 2011.