Why The Bhutto Magic Failed

THE belief that the rise and fall of Pakistan’s political parties is determined by its all-powerful Establishment is not groundless, and it will persist until the record of elected governments being summarily dismissed by presidential fiat is reversed. The role of the Establishment in securing the rout of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) this time will, therefore, figure in analyses and commentaries for a while. However, it’s possible to identify the purely political factors that have contributed to the near total eclipse suffered by Benazir Bhutto’s party.

The PPP has always had difficulty in settling down into the role of a properly structured political party. It believes itself to be a movement whose leader commands the allegiance of the masses without the assistance of any intermediaries. Regardless of the calibre and the performance of the functionaries, the chief may nominate at the various tiers of the party or to posts in government when in power. But it has rarely cared to examine the gradual weakening of its hold over the population.

The PPP registered a meteoric rise in the final years of the ’60s on the strength of the populist wave generated by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. He coined a set of slogans that held a strong appeal for almost all sections of society. He won over the intelligentsia by presenting a democratic alternative to Ayub Khan’s dictatorship, the middle class by promising an end to the monopoly of 22 families, the peasantry by raising the slogan of land to the tiller, and by promising the working class relief from exploitation by robber barons. He pandered to the peculiar proclivities of Punjab by pouring scorn over the Tashkent Declaration and by pledging a fight till victory with India. The religious elements were held at bay by inscribing Islam as one of the principal tenets of his political creed. The youth, radicalised by Vietnam’s successful resistance to the US aggression, was charmed with socialist rhetoric. The only thing the Bhutto formula lacked was accommodation for the nationalist aspirations of the Pathan and the Baluch (and the Bengali), and the PPP has never been able to protect this Achilles’ heel.

Partly due to the circumstances in which Bhutto came to power and partly as a result of his notions on governing an underdeveloped society, the PPP magic started waning soon after it acquired power. The working class was the first to be disenchanted, followed by liberal professionals who were alienated by the arbitrary style of rule. Finally, Bhutto took the dangerous course of dislodging the nationalists in the Frontier and Baluchistan provinces and ignored the risk in rehabilitating the military politically by relying on it to crush them. Finally, the PPP largely abandoned its credo by going into the ’77 election on the strength of the very local satraps it had ousted in ’70. Yet it retained the allegiance of the still-hopeful masses.

Gen. Zia-ul-Haq made no secret of his resolve to exterminate the PPP through a combination of oppression and chicanery in the name of religion. By liquidating Bhutto under the cover of a court verdict that even jurists had misgivings about and by subjecting the Bhutto women to protracted incarceration and other hardships, he confirmed the PPP’s position as the party entitled to public support on account of its sacrifices. Benazir became the natural standard - bearer of democratic forces and was able to win the ’88 election despite the none too secret attempts by the Establishment to thwart her ascent.

During the 20바카라 웹사이트 months Benazir’s first government lasted, it faced the difficult task of democratising a polity converted to authoritarianism. It failed on four counts. It was found wanting in its manoeuvring with the Establishment; it over-estimated the federal government’s authority over its rivals in the largest province (Punjab); it neglected the aspirations of the growing middle class in urban centres, and it preferred the administrative machinery to party cadres as the means of preserving its base. In the election that followed the dismissal of its government in ’90, the PPP saw its votebank greatly reduced but it paid less attention to this fact than to the Establishment’s interference with the electoral process. It was further diverted from these requisites of survival by the Nawaz Sharif government’s policy of vendetta, which sustained the PPP’s image as the oppressed party, and the rift in the Establishment.

These two factors did enable the P P P to emerge as the largest single party in the ’93 elections, but the alarm bells were ringing loud and clear. The P P P lost nearly all the cities and owed its strength almost wholly to the rural votes in Sindh and southern Punjab. Although able to extend its tenure to three years, the P P P government could not find a political way to deal with the different actors in the power game. Indeed, its reliance on the tactics its persecutors had used resulted in strengthening Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League. In addition, it became impervious to the public perception of corruption in high places. It concentrated on securing success in areas of secondary importance to the masses ( external relations, reduction in budget deficit ) 바카라 웹사이트 or that have long gestation periods (energy), or which produce intangible results (promotion of a liberal environment, maintenance of federal peace) and ignored indicators by which the masses judge a government (security of life, rule of law, employment opport unities and integrity of political representatives ).

Thus, when the axe fell again on the Benazir regime on November 5, 1996, the PPP found itself completely unprepared to face the electorate. That one of its own supporters in the presidency had wielded the hatchet, that the Supreme Court endorsed the charges against it and that the caretakers ran the election of the rival party only aggravated its plight. The basic causes of its debacle are the alienation of the party apparatus from both the leadership and the masses, its inability to inspire the people’s confidence and, above all, in the fact that it had pushed all nationalist and ethnic forces in the Frontier, Baluchistan and urban Sindh into the PML’s lap. Finding themselves out of mainstream politics in all four provinces, the PPP supporters saw little reason in trudging to the polling stations on February 3 and they surrendered to the PML in a mood of fatalistic resignation.

Those in a hurry to write the PPP off should, however, not underestimate the new government’s capacity to rehabilitate it. But that will be another story.

(I.A. Rehman is a Pakistani columnist and a human rights activist.)