PPP feces electoral debacle

Notwithstanding a successful appeal in the Supreme Court, former prime minister Raja Pervez Ashraf has no chance to participate in May 11 elections. It is a big setback to Pakistan People’s Party. The development cannot be seen in isolation. Several other potential party candidates have been thrown out of the election process by returning officers and appellate tribunals. The party’s first prime minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani is also out of the race after his disqualification by the Supreme Court in a contempt case for not writing to Swiss authorities about President Asif Ali Zardari’s ‘bank accounts’ in Switzerland. And above all, young Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, the PPP chairperson, left the election race even before it began. All these factors have combined to grip the PPP in a fear that it might see the party facing one of its worst debacles in elections which are a little more than three weeks away. No pun intended but many, including workers, are asking: Is the party over for People’s Party after 43 years of its inception? Even if it is not, it requires a major operation to remain on political horizon as a major player in the country’s politics.

What appears imminent is that the PPP would be so relegated in the elections as to find it difficult even to be part of a coalition government. All this has happened because the party has lost its identity as the organization of the masses. So much so that it has alienated itself from its enthusiastic workers and become yet another party which is playing power politics. Gone are the days when its workers used to burn themselves alive to save their founding chairperson, the late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who showed charisma in his leadership to mobilize the people to fight against the present exploitative system, go to jails and gallows and be reckoned as the most courageous workers any party had in south Asia. His daughter, the late Benazir Bhutto, also proved herself to be a true leader who had the qualities of a fearless fighter. She led from the front and pulled tens of thousands of people to her rallies. She was so brave that she dared death embraced it but never flinched from leading the masses on the right path. On her return she was returning leading a huge rally after addressing a mammoth public when she was attacked. The attack also left hundred of PPP workers dead. Her son, who will turn 26 in September this year, is also acceptable to the PPP workers and no wonder that he would become the youngest member of the National Assembly soon after attaining required age. But the workers seem in no mood to acknowledge anyone else, especially a non-Bhutto, as their leader.

For all practical purposes, the PPP seems nowhere in the coming elections. The party will only have to think past the upcoming elections and far into the future and will have to undertake a big exercise to bring back dedicated workers it has lost and then mobilize them to go to the people with a clarion call that the party continues to be custodian of the programme, agenda and manifesto set by the late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and his illustrious daughter, the tigress of Pakistan’s politics. That the PPP’s revolutionary message is missing, is the biggest loss it has ever suffered. The party, with Sindh continuing as its stronghold, can achieve the target once Bilawal holds the sway. Subsequent reorganization of the party will also be a big challenge. The party will have to rely for party jobs on old guards rather than opportunity seekers who are now found in the rank and file in abundance and they include the big names who have changed loyalty on all opportune moments. The reorganization process will not be complete without establishing primary units all over the country. This course of political action was started when the PPP was founded on November 30, 1969. But with the passage of the time, they disappeared and many key office-holders in the past focused on constituencies alone to reorganize the party only to win elections without the support of primary units.

Another must-do should be charging every member with a prescribed monthly subscription to give the sense of participation to all party workers from top to bottom. Thus the PPP will establish a party fund that will save them from the embarrassment of asking for funds from the influential people. A party fund is the pre-requisite for the internal strength of political parties across the world, but unfortunately this important aspect is ignored in Pakistan’s political milieu.

http://www.thefrontierpost.com/category/46/