The once popular national party now stands at a glum crossroad over its future
The PPP presents a sorry spectacle these days. One of its senior leaders says one thing, another says or acts quite the opposite, while a third makes flighty remarks which are blatantly untrue, even comically so. The party’s disconnect with reality and its vote bank grows by the day. It is tough decision time for PPP, and the path now taken will determine its future role in national politics. And the man who needs to take the difficult decision is none other than the co-chairman, Asif Ali Zardari.
The bi-polarity in the party’s actions and words is difficult to digest for the general public. Party Chairman’s Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari’s much publicized vow of confronting the PML-N over his four points, both on the streets and on Nawaz Sharif’s home turf of Punjab, ended not with a bang but with a whimper. The policy was shot down the moment the co-chairman landed in town. Credible party veterans charged by Bilawal to wake up its slumbering and disillusioned voters in pivotal Punjab province, receive contradictory signals regarding the PML-N government. The Sindh Chief Minister is required to brief Asif Zardari on his recent participation at the sixth Joint Cooperation Committee meeting of the CPEC in Beijing. The Sindh IG, by universal testimony a man of integrity, was rudely removed reportedly in connection with some raids and arrests in the offices of a close aide of Zardari. He is now back by court orders. Hence, the opposition leader Khursheed Shah’s remarks that decision making in the party is ‘hundred percent’ with Bilawal only invite cynicism.
The party’s very unity appears at stake now. Loyalist Aitzaz Ahsan expressed his surprise over the elder Zardari’s sudden Parliamentary ambitions, without consulting senior party leaders. The People’s Party needs to end the crony and boon companion- based politics of unprincipled wheeling dealing, Sindh- centred politics and the Sindh card, if it is to remain in the national limelight. Zardari ‘over the whole world’ no longer holds good – he is no BB.
