Bilawal’s speech hits right notes

Where Bilawal scored, and it may be scored well, is that he named names, pointed unequivocal finger at the terrorists.

Thus far, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has never looked easy when donning the political mantle; but as patron-in-chief of the roundly defeated PPP, he cannot escape the occasional political outing and he made one such on October 18. He spoke at a rally on the spot where 177 people were killed and over 600 injured in an attempt on his mothers’ life in 2007, and his speech was heavy with import. Of late, there has been something of a war of words between Bilawal and members of opposing parties on social media, and the online world emerged into hard reality when he castigated his political opponents. He was scathing about the PTI, calling the party ‘cowardly’ in its responses to terrorist attacks, including that on a church in Peshawar on September 21. The PPP would, he said, save the people of K-P from “drowning in the tsunami”. His party is one of “courageous and martyred leaders” and is not afraid of terrorists, his words resonant as he spoke on the spot where his own mother nearly died.

He spoke in euphemism when referring to the MQM, commenting that whilst Pakistan got its independence in 1947, Karachi was still ruled, in colonial fashion, from London. An MQM spokesperson later remarked that Bilawal was fooling himself if he thought the PPP could dent the MQM, and a PTI spokesperson observed drily that Bilawal “lacked political knowledge”. The ruling PML-N was caricatured as a lion with its belly full of the blood of poor people but the speech was hardly one of political greatness, and smacked more of being a reminder to the nation that the PPP had had a drubbing but was still alive and kicking — the rhetorical equivalent of a collection of online tweets. Where Bilawal scored, and it may be scored well, is that he named names and pointed an unequivocal finger at the terrorists. He and the PPP now need to convince a sceptical public that they are worth their vote in 2018, and that is going to take more than finger-pointing and name calling, but the Bilawal marker has clearly been put down. 

Published in The Express Tribune, October 20^th, 2013.

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