Lahore is gearing up for two big rallies end of this month. Though both are “anti-government” conventions, it is each other that they are competing with, not the PPP. On one side is the provincial government, the PML(N), slated to have a rally on the 28th. On the other, perpetual newcomer Imran Khan’s PTI, with a rally on the 30th. The pre-match barbs have already started. A government, asks Imran Khan aloud, is taking out a rally against the government? He has a point. True, it is the federal government that the League’s rally is against but decorum has to be maintained if one’s party is in a government, any government. The next election, after all, is two years away; this is too early for campaign rallies.
But it is not the issue of decorum on which the PTI chief bases his point. According to him, the PPP-League collective is a faceless mesh where you don’t know where one starts and the other ends; Noora-kushti. The only opposition in the country, he claims, is himself. That in itself is a problematic position, for a host of reasons, but one that he is entitled to take. The PPP’s pleas not to hold the rallies, because of the security situation and the death of Begum Nusrat Bhutto, weren’t thought through. Yes, there is to be much mudslinging against the party at both rallies but this is a time to sit back and enjoy the show. Lahore is N country anyway and the PPP doesn’t have much to lose.
Are these going to be fair shows of power? Of course not. One of the rallies, it has to be stated emphatically, is by the province’s ruling party. The other, as undenied rumours keep doing the rounds, has found the favour of the powers that be. Once the latter decide to start footing the bill, there’s enough money to provide logistical arrangements even for the high-maintenance supporters of the PTI.
Even in fairer settings, rally numbers do not necessarily translate into electoral outcomes. But in the upcoming ones, the numbers will be indicative of nothing substantive at all.
