Daily Times Editorial Oct 19, 2013

Bilawal Bhutto Zardari’s political launching In an emotion-laden speech at the sixth anniversary commemoration of the Karsaz, Karachi bomb attacks on late Benazir Bhutto’s procession, her son and political heir, Chairman of her PPP, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari struck a combative note out of synch with the implicit political culture and code of behaviour that has characterised politics over the last five years. That culture of tolerance and by and large moderate expression when speaking of political rivals took root because the PPP under co-Chairperson former president Asif Ali Zardari followed the philosophy of Benazir Bhutto of reconciliation. This was reciprocated by the main opposition party, the PML-N of Nawaz Sharif, as well as other political parties. However, this reconciliatory approach, apart from other factors such as cronyism trumping merit under Zardari’s leadership and the attack on the previous government from various directions including state institutions such as the superior judiciary, could not prevent a debacle for the PPP in the 2013 elections. Arguably, it may even have contributed to it since the PPP government was perceived as taking ‘lying down’ all that was said and done against it. Now if the young Bilawal thinks it time to move away from the ‘softly, softly’ approach of his father and take the fight to his opponents, this speech may mark that turn away from his late mother’s conclusions towards the end of her life. Bilawal lashed out at three parties he obviously considers his main rivals: the PML-N, PTI and MQM. He issued a war call for ‘hunting the tiger (the PML-N election symbol) that slakes its hunger with the blood of the poor’. He trashed PTI’s Imran Khan as being “cowardly” in his approach to the terrorists, citing the apologia offered by him while standing outside the Christian church in Peshawar where worshippers were massacred by the fanatics. Regarding the MQM, he stated tongue in cheek that Karachi was still ruled from London (a swipe at Altaf Hussain). In contrast, he referred to the courage and sprit of sacrifice of the PPP leadership and its workers. The PML-N and MQM’s terse and brief response to Bilawal has been somewhat dismissive, alluding to the political ‘immaturity’ of what appears to be the formal launch of the latest Bhutto to enter the political fray. Bilawal has expressed his intention to run in the next (2018) elections, having attained legal age, or perhaps sooner through a by-election to get him into parliament. Bilawal’s vow to conduct a jihad against the extremists only serves as a reminder of the failure of the PPP government to effectively counter the terrorists while in power. Sindh Information Minister Sharjeel Memon and others of the PPP have asserted that the Karsaz bomb attack site was ‘washed clean’ of evidence, much as the Liaquat Bagh site where Benazir Bhutto was assassinated was hosed down before any forensic investigation. While the claim about Karsaz is new, if true it would point to a pattern the Musharraf government adopted to cover up the crimes against Benazir and the PPP after her return, a cover up that reinforces suspicions about Musharraf’s role in these events. However, while the PPP complaints of a cover up have weight, its own efforts to uncover the conspiracy that took Benazir’s life while in power over the last five years were, to put it politely, inadequate. Bilawal’s targeted parties, the PML-N and MQM, in their riposte to him have taunted him and his party for their inability to bring the murderers of his mother to justice despite being in power for five years. The PPP’s crisis and dilemma rests on its efforts since the 1990s to reinvent itself, no longer as the party wedded to a radical change in favour of the poor and the people in general, but as a centrist ‘garden variety’ party acceptable to the establishment. While Benazir Bhutto had the charisma and political savvy to pull off this trick to some extent, her husband and successor lacked in these departments. The party ended up falling between two stools, its past and its present, with disastrous consequences. One reflection of that fate is how the 2013 elections have seen the only remaining all-country party being reduced to a provincial rump, much in line with how all other parties in the political spectrum now appear. Bilawal spoke with pride about the PPP’s jiyalas (committed workers), but these poor souls never even got a look in at the leadership of the party under Mr Zardari. It is a great challenge for the young leader of the party to resurrect the spirit of the PPP’s workers to reset the party on the path of revival and a better future.