Toughest test: President Asif Zardari faces the sternest test of his political career in trying to hold the party together.

 

By Kamran Rehmat/Islamabad

In a country, where the volume of conservative vote has risen exponentially, the dismal performance of the liberal, left-leaning Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) in government and, as a consequence, in last May’s elections has raised fears about the future of a party, whose fortunes have often been equated with Pakistan remaining a tolerant, liberal and progressive nation.

But what happened to the grand old dame of Pakistan’s politics and what the future holds for it has lessons for not just the PPP but for both Pakistan Muslim League of Nawaz Sharif (PML-N) and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) of Imran Khan as they dig in for the long haul to represent national mandates.

The post-mortem began within PPP with co-chairman Asif Zardari - suddenly seeming no longer as wily and steely, and invincible, as he did for all these years in the run up to the hustings - having conducted a quick, dirty review in Lahore within 10 days of the result.

Like most preliminary analyses, the PPP in-house verdict proffered an oversimplification of what went wrong rather than a deeper investigation of what really happened.

Load-shedding and counter-productive alliances (with the Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid) were promptly blamed, as was the Taliban threat to the leadership and the cadres that prevented a vigorous public campaign. But these are easy answers that basically aim at skirting responsibility rather than the surgery that is screaming for itself.

There are harder truths to swallow, for PPP. It has primarily represented the interests of the rural, semi-urban poor, the labourers, the peasants and the marginalised communities such as faith-based minorities, women and secular classes.

The party of the Bhuttos has, in general, ignored the body of middle and upper middle classes who run small and large businesses, and the urban horde of professional classes frantically engaged in upward mobility. The latter has usually been the natural constituency of the business-minded PML-N. The PTI, of course, seems to have stolen primarily the subset of the professional classes from within the PML-N support base.

But five years in power at the federal level and in Sindh province and the perception that PPP is still a left-liberal party that fights the religious fundamentalists, supports the oppressed and plays Robin Hood for the poor has been exposed to serious doubts even though a written change in the policies hasn’t occurred.

If this is not so then how has the once mighty PPP incredibly shrunk its total vote from an impressive 10.6mn in 2008 (highest in that election) to 6.9mn in 2013 (placed third after PML-N and PTI which between themselves have polled more than thrice as many votes as PPP). This means that if both PML-N and PTI have performed well in the battle for votes, they haven’t plundered each other’s votes but those of PPP (as well as PML-Q and ANP, of course)!

This means PPP’s once super-loyal activist vote bank is now half what it was because all they got (the constitutional battles, the behind-the-scene fight with the military and in-full-public-view ‘resistance’ of the judiciary on the issue of corruption - real or imagined - notwithstanding) was the lights going out in their homes and factories, the gas becoming too expensive to cook their meals and a whopping near doubling of those living below the poverty line to nearly 40% of the population.

While it lost across the board, the collapse of the PPP in Punjab is not just spectacular, it may well be the end of the road for it there and, therefore, not likely it can come back to head the federal government for without performing well in Punjab you can’t do it.

Even before former prime minister Benazir Bhutto’s shock assassination in 2007, the PPP was underselling its left-liberal agenda. After Zardari took the helm he was simply too taken with pragmatism to make the most of the opportunities represented by virtually no one else offering the left-liberal agenda.

The PPP’s real failure in power - which came to bite its bottom in May 2013 - was not being able to translate the space for left-of-centre politics into a sustainable constituency electorally. That’s why its laziness forced it to play to the agendas (singular nationalism as an antidote to messy pluralisms, talks-with-Taliban, etc) set by right-of-centre forces such as PML-N and PTI.

According to analyst Haris Gazdar, the PPP has four options, three of which centre on what it does in Punjab next:

(a) PPP attempts a rebuild in the south on Seraiki/regional development issues, ie give up on the north; (b) It tries to become even more like a typical Muslim League faction and bide its time - ditching any remaining social-democratic hue and courting “electables”, banking on inevitable failures of the coming government (inevitable, not because PML-N is bound to fail, but because all governments are bound to fail); (c) Be aggressive about anti-jihadism, selected social-democratic/working class/women’s issues and selected secular causes (as opposed to middle class populism) across Punjab but particularly the north, where neither PML-N nor PTI can ever really outflank it - i.e., court working classes, women, and pro-secular segments at the expense of the conservative middle classes; (d) Become a Sindh-only party, although this does not seem realistic.

While these are alternative scenarios, they are not mutually exclusive. Option “b” has enjoyed the greatest weight up to now. The emergence of PTI, however, makes the viability of “b” questionable, as PTI can more comfortably occupy the space that exists for an anti-PML-N party in Punjab as its policy platform is identical to PML-N, hence its greater comfort. So, a choice between “a” and “c”, or some combination of the two seems logical - even if it is seen as challenging and disturbing to the leadership. But then if you have so little to lose, why not try something different?

The spoiler in any “a” + “b” combo will be the uncertain durability of PTI which will face serious challenges now. The post-tumble Imran looks psychologically vulnerable, the tsunami did not happen, Punjab PTI is dominated by electables, who owe less to Imran than he would have liked, and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa PTI is looking more and more like status quo than change. So if PTI fizzles instead of sizzles then the PPP will be inclined toward ‘b’.

 

*The writer may be reached at [email protected]