By
Sattar Rind
Pakistan People’s Party co-chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari recently offered an excuse to PPP workers, known in Urdu as ‘Jiyalas’.
They have been hurt by any one of the people’s party leadership or by policies or inappropriate actions of the party, particularly to keep them detached and provide poor governance, in turn losing economic opportunities during the last PPP government.
As has recently been written in numerous articles, they are on the right path, the PPP leader advising their ‘ignorant’ workers that if they are not interested in the PPP then they may join parties leaning to the left. The issue was that they had never accentuated how to attract and convince the public of their policies throughout the 67 years history of Pakistan.
Bilawal Bhutto Zardari is co-chairman of the party which had been founded almost forty years ago by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (ZAB), a legacy his family still enjoys today in terms of political supremacy in Pakistani politics. It is said that he ‘conquered’ the hearts of wretched people and still rules over them from his grave.
Zardari’s mother proved the same greatness from what her father Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and grandfather Bilawal Bhutto did. Instead of offering the excuse therefore, Bilawal Bhutto needs to understand the culture of the party which he is co-leading.
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was a great nationalist leader with a vision of national building, understanding and command of history in international and national politics. He was however executed by right wing forces on April 4th 1979, an act that even violated prison manuals set by the British Raj in the early 18th century.
ZAB was cleared of any allegations of financial corruption, his enemies never even daring to level such allegations against him. Somehow, the same credability has been benefited to Benazir Bhutto (BB). That’s why, when the first government was terminated on corruption allegations, people of Pakistan started to cry with heart pinching slogans ‘Ya Allah -Ya Rasool Benazir baqasoor’ (O!! God You know –O!! Messenger of the God You Know Benazir committed no sin).
BBs’ martyrdom was irremediable, his loss quaking the nation, the public, especially in Sindh, comparing it with other examples of Karbala martyrdoms in Muslim history.
Therefore, when the PPP came into power again, people were free of any demanding provisions but it was understood and were bound to oblige by the PPP. The general assumption of Peoples Party politics was that the PPP government would provide good governance.
The rule of law and institutional structures have literally been broken by the PPP government. The corruption was unlimited even at a time when it may have tried to seek refuge in its own ignominy for the sake of buying time and being able to be included in examples of bad governance.
The party’s entire rules of business have been changed, the most important being the shift from workers to electable persons in the national election. The party has not however set any limit for electable persons, giving them a free hand to do whatever they want to become a winning candidate for the next election.
Being politically aware, the electable persons had started to portray that they were not ravenous by nature and they already hold each and everything by the grace of God from their forefathers. In fact, they are doing the dirty thing just because of the party’s new leadership, forcing them to ‘payback’, in the form of commission from the pillaging of public money. When the People’s Party ministers and others without ministerial portfolio in government become lords of the corruption, rendering that the custodian party are demand their financial share,the public is very much inclined to accept it.
Besides, why would they be wrong? As the British poet T.S. Eliot used to say, ‘at amazing levels the ordinary person knows the conspiracies of palaces’.
In reaction to such governance, I think the educated people or foreign qualified persons. leaving behind the rationality or logic or any sensibility, have started supporting Imran Khan as he has stated that he will end corruption and bring justice to ‘everywhere in the country. Given that his aim is for all institutions to be free of corruption, he is receiving support from the public in response.
This is another issue and it is obvious that neither he could nor would be allowed by the system to do something good. Furthermore, he himself does not seems mature enough or have the stomach to run a state. He has been given a golden opportunity in the shape of the Khyber Pukhtoonkhah government to prove and make it an example for other provinces as well as for the federal government. Nevertheless he failed and prefers to be a puppet and accordingly a failure as a politician.
Bilawal was however born with the political gene, but damaged by the virus of corruption at high levels, even by his own surrounding people. Bad governance by the PPP lead government at federal and provincial level over the last seven years will follow and strike him everywhere in future politics. Those who are responsible for giving the party a bad name are surprisingly still in his inner circle and offering advice to him.
In this situation when he offered the excuse to workers, he seemed to make a joke of his own style and nothing more.
It appears as though these advisors counseled him in offering the excuse to workers, not honestly briefing him. No one would purport methods for the greater interest of the future of the PPP. Therefore, he has to rely on his own vision and needs to forecast himself what people will expect in politics. He must not forget that he is the son of hope and light of dejected people who expect from him in politics. Electable people are seasonal birds that will not always stay in one place, whereas the disheartened people have been proved over forty years of the Peoples Party history, remaining firm through its ups and downs, suffering a great deal in the process.
Mr. Satter, you have strong grip over the political affairs particularly on the politics of sindh province. Its really an emerging dimension in the politics of the region.