Cometh the man?
It’s not as if PPP has never risen from the ashes. But the ’13 rout was different. The party was not left with the semblance of a structure in Punjab, at least, once the chips fell in their places. The leadership only made things worse by ignoring the province in the three years since. If anything, Asif Zardari’s warming up to the N-league in the dharna days left the party grassroot fuming. Even insiders began calling it PML-N’s b-team. Yet Zardari’s deeper concerns were understandable. The party was, of course, in no position to handle another election should the government fall. Hence the support at the joint session – even at the cost of b-team labelling.
Surprisingly, though, Zardari still did not do much about Punjab. With Bilawal now having finally kick-started the campaign from Lahore, some are already dismissing it as too late. There is just not enough time to start from scratch and be up to scratch by ’18. Others say the only thing the party can do now in Punjab is strengthen the ruling party by splitting the opposition vote bank. Also, attempts to get those that left in these years to come back are not likely to achieve much, as an investigative story by this paper revealed last week.
What, then, can Bilawal do to rally the ranks? He’d do well to get over the martyr and victim card. It does not even sell within the party anymore. So far he’s not mentioned much by way of his manifesto. The shake-up makes the right headlines, granted, but everybody knows how much autonomy party heads really exercise and where orders really come from. Otherwise the new Sindh CM would not spend half as much time shuttling to Dubai as he does. All in all Bilawal has made the right noise so far, but not yet answered the important questions. It’s when he lays it in black and white that it’ll become clear how far he is the man for the job for today’s PPP.
