The return of the native

The president and the PPP ain’t going nowhere

You couldn’t find adversaries like President Zardari’s even if you wanted to. With the resolve of mountain, they blew hot air rumour balloons. Sometimes these balloons popped, sometimes they deflated. But the opponents continue to be relentless. They keep huffing and puffing and releasing new balloons into the political stratosphere believing that these flaccid balloons can be used as dirigible target missiles aimed at President Zardari. Comfortable in their delusion, they keep issuing news releases.

Sometimes they say that the army is out to get President Zardari. At others, they suggest that America wants him out and at others that the party leadership is not happy with him. Even stories of tiffs between the president and prime minister are spun. These people spinning stories have also said that the president will meet his end by order of the Supreme Court. These people are delusional to an extent that they believe that, if not anything else, these doctored stories might be the end of him.

Hence, they are convinced that they will see the back of Zardari. The only question is how. Will he walk out of the president house on his own two feet? Will he be taken out in an ambulance? It is said that such self-delusions often die down when one is faced with the uncomfortable truth. But one has to appreciate the persistence of these rumour-mongers. They are slapped again and again by the ignominy of defeat. Their ominous predictions are always proved wrong but their dogged determination doesn’t falter. President Zardari is not being very kind to these people by continuing in office for four years.

In the past few weeks, the president’s detractors could almost taste sweet victory. The president suddenly got ill and went to Dubai. Before leaving, he told his son Bilawal Bhutto that his presence in the country should let their opponents know that they are not going to desert the country. Despite that, the president’s adversaries kept their hopes alive. They built their edifices of lies on shifting sands. They had convinced themselves that the president was not ill but had been booted out. Others also said that he wasn’t booted out but had ran off to save himself from the fallout of the memo scandal. One politician even said on national television that something would happen within 72 hours. Those 72 hours passed many times but nada. But that politician exhibited no blushes of embarrassment. Another politician also said quite stubbornly that Zardari would go directly to London from Dubai. He was asked three or four days later that Zardari sb had not gone to London but he replied with confidence that he had in fact reached London.

The president was rumoured to be suffering from every disease there is: paralysis, heart attack, blood pressure, nervous breakdown, Bell’s palsy. Some even went two steps ahead in their conjectures and said that he was undergoing speech therapy. It should be noted here that if this were indeed the case, such speech therapy would take months. But President Zardari started calling meetings as soon as he returned and gave a speech on BB Shaheed’s death anniversary. He spoke fluently and fervently. So much for these rumours and rumourmongers! Even though the president stood fit and fine before them, instead of backing down in mortification, these people continued obdurately. If these people aren’t backing down, so isn’t the president. As said earlier, the president isn’t being kind to the poor souls by constantly exposing them as shameful liars. Their own doctored lies are punishment enough for these people.

Not just President Zardari but the PPP itself has been ‘unkind’ to its detractors in a similar manner since its inception. After every election, its opponent live on the hope that its popularity will wane and it will have to pack its bags and leave. Bhutto sb had been in power for very little time when a few generals and brigadiers got it into their heads that they could take over. They were caught. The opposition that Bhutto sb’s time was up and he could be routed in the elections. But Bhutto sb announced early elections and the opposition started blowing the trumpet of its own impending victory. But they spoke too soon. Come election time, the jiyalas came out with full force like a deluge on the streets and Bhutto sb succeeded with more than a two-thirds majority. His opponents then started crying foul and the army ousted him and subsequently hanged him.

The dictator Zia-ul-Haq unleashed all kinds of fury on the PPP and thought that this would mean obliteration of the party. When he formed constituent assemblies and thought he had assured his rule, Mohtrama Benazir came back at that point. The paper ship of which Zia-ul-Haq believed to be an indomitable vessel and thought of himself as its captain began to tear apart. The generals who were his heirs began to fear the return of the PPP. Thus, they spend billions in creating a united front of a conglomeration of parties. They spared no effort in electoral rigging. They didn’t let the PPP get a decisive majority but also could not stop it from forming the government. That government was deposed before it could complete even its third year. They waved their ‘magic wand’ in the next elections to defeat the PPP but that wand failed in the subsequent elections and the PPP won again.

During his tenure, Musharraf thought they he could defeat the PPP by keeping Benazir Bhutto in exile but that did not work. PPP’s candidates won and some of them had to be brought into the fold as ‘lotas’ to form the government. Later, in 2008’s election, PPP won the most seats despite the best efforts of opponents. It has been running the government successfully for almost four years now. A few big rallies in the past days has again awoken the slumbering wishes of PPP’s detractors and they are again convinced that the party’s popularity is rapidly declining. But President Zardari has proved that decisively wrong by holding a bigger rally than Lahore and Karachi in a rural backwater of Sindh.

An entire generation has grown old dreaming dreams of seeing the PPP defeated. But it is they who have been defeated and the present generation of detractors will meet the same fate. The PPP is the party of the poor and the downtrodden. They neither read the papers nor watch the news. Their relationship with their leadership is that of love and hope. The disaffectations caused by the fissures of class have further strengthened this relation. Till there is poverty, there will be the PPP. And if any party can defeat poverty, it will also be the PPP. It might not be Zardari, but Bilawal, Bakhtawar, Aseefa might be able to take Bhutto sb’s dream to fruition. The dream of seeing the prosperity of Pakistan’s poor and downtrodden.

The writer is one of Pakistan’s most widely read columnists.