To date, his claim to fame is his pedigree. His legendary mother, Benazir Bhutto, inspired millions of downtrodden in Pakistan. Yet, if Bilawal Bhutto Zardari inspires to do justice to his mother’s memory, he should unlearn what he has been taught recently and start afresh with a grassroots movement to revive a party that bears no resemblance today to the one his grandfather founded.
Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has returned to Karachi after a self-imposed exile of seven months. Rumour has it that a family feud had forced him out of Karachi and news reports suggest that his sisters have brokered a ceasefire between him and his father Asif Ali Zardari.
Political leadership is not a part-time affair where one can take sudden sabbaticals at will, leaving the party hanging high and dry. Pakistanis in general and jiyalas in particular are becoming increasingly disillusioned by the democratic process.
The challenge for Bilawal is not to just revive the Peoples Party, but to help restore the nation’s faith in the democratic process.
Given the sorry state of the Peoples Party, irrespective of it being in control of the provincial legislature in Sindh, it is quite a daunting task for anyone inspiring to resuscitate it at the national level.
Also read: Bilawal’s return to set off ‘change in PPP politics’
It is, however, critical for the long-term stability of Pakistan that a political force with relatively secular leanings and a national outreach takes strength to counter the rising tide of religious fundamentalism in the country.
In the absence of other credible and stronger forces, the task rests with the Peoples Party.
Revive the intellectual core
The Pakistan Peoples Party was the first mass movement in Pakistan that articulated socialist and secular policies and promised an egalitarian social order for the future.
A large number of accomplished intellectuals formed the core of the Peoples Party. While the face of the party was the charismatic leader Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, his alluring facade was supported by opinion leaders such as Dr Mubashir Hasan, Malik Meraj Khalid and Meraj Muhammad Khan.
The party had enough intellectual capital that it could even publish newspapers to spread its ideological message to larger audiences. Nusrat, Fatah, and Musawaat are examples of the party’s publishing arms.
Also read: Also read: PPP rift: Pushed in, left out
While being a student at an engineering university in the late 1980s, I also wrote for the editorial pages of Musawaat.
For decades, the Peoples Party maintained its intellectual lead and the resulting maturity in political thought over the rest. The struggle against General Zia’s military rule was led by Benazir Bhutto, again a charismatic leader like her father.
However, she also enjoyed strong intellectual support from the likes of Aitzaz Ahsan, Farhatullah Babar, and Wajid Shamsul Hasan.
A large number of intellectuals openly identified with the Peoples Party in the 1980s. Studying at a university in Peshawar, I would regularly visit newspaper offices where I would find left-leaning journalists in majority in English language publications. Editors like Azeez Siddiqui of The Frontier Post and Mazhar Ali Khan of Viewpoint, human right activists like Asma Jahangir, and academics like Dr Pervez Hoodhbhoy, all advocated for a system with a secular inclination. Those were the good times when the Peoples Party was true to its ideological base and enjoyed the support of the public as well as the intellectual classes.
However, it appears that over the next there decades, the party lost its soul.
Once seen as the party of the downtrodden for its stance on the distributive role of the state, today the party seems to represent nothing more than a few ethnic enclaves where one is re-elected on ethnic grounds than for his/her political leaning.
The close ties the Peoples Party once enjoyed with the secular intellect in Pakistan are lost.
Nowadays, no self-respecting secular intellectual would like to be seen fraternising with the party. Bilawal has to bring the party back to its intellectual roots and PPP has to re-emerge along with its ideological past to counter the right-wing extremist narrative in Pakistan.
Also read: Serious differences between Bilawal and Zardari: Mirza
In the world of ubiquitous think tanks and social media, purpose-driven political research agendas can go a long way in developing a political base.
Pakistan’s socio-economic crises require serious research and imagination for one to come up with plausible solutions. Bilawal can begin by putting together like-minded intellect to propose viable solutions for the challenges Pakistan faces.
Once a set of plausible solutions is identified that relies on the intellectual capital in Pakistan, a political agenda and manifesto would soon follow. This, however, is a long-term process. I hope Bilawal will stay long enough to see it through.