I agree with the writer. President Musharaf has managed to divide the PPP, and the legacy of Bhutto is being eliminated.
http://thenews.jang.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=75642
It was Zia who hanged Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto but it is Musharraf who has actually been successful in eliminating the Bhutto legacy. The National Reconciliation Ordinance that gives Benazir Bhutto a clean slate to reenter politics also marks the end of the PPP’s claim to the idealism that had enabled Zulfikar Ali Bhutto to create legacy of the famous jialas. To think that a political party can create or maintain for long a legacy of committed political followers on the basis of material opportunism so blatantly being shown by Benazir Bhutto is the biggest mistake on the part of the party leadership. The deal with General Musharraf is the beginning of the end of the PPP as the popular party of Pakistan. It is the idealism inherent in the socialist ideas that had won Bhutto the loyalist worker; it was not the politics of patronage alone that did the wonder.
If there has been a disappointment with the PPP’s deal with the military, it is not with Benazir. To be disappointed, one needs to have some hope in the one who is the source of disappointment. Benazir can hardly claim that to her credit now as for majority she is irrelevant: an opportunist politician keen to get into power irrespective of the method used. The disappointment has thus not been with her but those faces in the party who claimed some credibility in their own right. The PPP surely had more of these faces than other parties. Yet, they have stood by the party showing no dissent to the party legacy being written off by its own leader. That might be their answer, i.e., how can they resist the leader. After all they have invested years in moving up the party ranks and they cannot afford to quit the party and waste all that investment. But, it is the tough times that build or break a politician’s credibility. The party’s ranks have been tested for the ideologically-driven leaders and apart from Aitzaz Ahsan sadly no one has passed the test.
Seen this way, the good news is that the current developments have exposed the true PPP. It is a party defunct of any ideology; it is a party out to grab power just for the sake of personal benefit. No longer can it claim the moral high ground of being anti-establishment. And this exposition is good because Benazir did not return to Pakistan even the first time without developing understanding with the military. The difference this time is that now these negotiations have been public and worst of all they have been on the back of the genuine pro-democracy movement led by the lawyers and some of the political party in the opposition. Benazir might keep claiming that the PPP lawyers played a key role in the movement and that might be true. But, the success of the movement rested in the collective action among the lawyers and the opposition parties and not in PPP’s lawyers alone. If the PPP was confident of undertaking mass mobilization on its own, it’s leader wont be paying homage to Washington every few weeks.
The present PPP politics is no different than that of the PML-Q or the MQM. It is a politics where leaders believe in winning vote through promising people jobs and not by convincing them of certain ideals. Party manifestos become irrelevant in this kind of politics because you are not mobilizing people on basis of a vision of where the society collectively should move; you are simply bagging the vote on the basis of the government jobs and contracts you can promise. Talking to PPP members justify the party line on the basis that they have been out of power for too long and that they need to get back into power to distribute some political favours to their workers is amusing. In return one can then only ask as to what is the difference between them and the lot we already have in the government. The response surprisingly is very honest: ‘that is the reality of real politics.’ Despite disillusionment with Benazir, few had realized that the standards of the party under her leadership have stooped so low that becoming another PML-Q was the real party aspiration.
After striking this deal with the military, the question no longer is about what PPP is and what it will do in coming months. The question really is that who is going to emerge to fill the new space available in Pakistani politics to initiate the politics of ideas. Can some of the lawyers come together to the launch such a party? There are many who feel they should. The point is not whether these people will win the seats to the parliament. They might not succeed in the first round but the mere presence of a political party, which talks of radical ideas and social reform changes the political atmosphere. It gives people, especially the youth possible alternatives to work towards. Imran Khan is an excellent example of how even one single person provide strong opposition to the ruling government if he has clear principles. The fact is that Justice Wajihuddin Ahmed might not have even received the three to five votes that he did in the presidential elections but just by opposing General Musharraf in on clear principles he provided those ordinary Pakistanis who were against this election a powerful reference point. We need to see more action of this kind if a social change is to come in Pakistan. Else, there is continuation of the same old opportunist politics whether it is PML-Q or the PPP in power.
