Let’s get it right: it’s not just the military-mullah alliance (or the US and India) that pulls Pakistan down. There are also those who bury their necks in the sand when voted into power and cry murder when thrown out of it. Take the mainstream political parties which break no taboos when in power, set nothing right when they can, but flag their victimhood when they are booted out. Why do the PPP and the PML-N so readily come to mind?Despite its repeated, rhetorical commitment to democracy, the PPP has something roguish in its working as a ruling party. Within the party the tendency towards autocracy at the very top leaves little room for dissent,
while working with its coalition partners it exercises a hegemonic unilateralism when it comes to sharing power or even decision making. Take the recent case of the party’s fallout with the MQM, which commands the urban vote in Sindh and deserves by virtue of its mandate to exercise some power. This, the MQM got in the form of running the city government in Karachi. The ceremonial post of the governor, with no real executive powers vested in him, meant little for the MQM.
The abolition of the local government system and its replacement with the colonial-time commissionerate system has nothing remotely democratic about it. It is a naked mechanism for controlling urban Sindh by a ruling party that does not command an urban vote bank, and hence it resorts to undemocratic means by keeping those out of the power equation who do have an urban democratic mandate. The MQM’s City District Government, Karachi was very popular with the people because it delivered on its promises and served the city well. To abolish the system just to spite the MQM will further alienate Karachi residents from the policies of the PPP. It will increase political polarisation and may result in blood-letting, as recent clashes and killings in Karachi have shown.
The PPP has done what it did with its eyes set on the next election. Because of utter lack of governance, the PPP’s approval ratings have been far from envious even in its home base of rural Sindh. The party’s vociferous former home minister had said that the party would use the Sindh card as and when it deemed fit. Now a strategy has been devised to pit the Sindhis against non-Sindhis in Karachi in the hope that doing so would boast the PPP’s Sindhi credentials and win it the popular vote from rural Sindh — the same rural Sindh where the party’s MPs do not allow schools to function or roads and communication infrastructure to be built.
The dubious logic at work is that a deprived Sindh has historically worked to the PPP’s electoral advantage, so keep the status quo; let no winds of change or development reach the deep and dark recesses of the rural hinterland. The utterly impoverished peasantry is thus restricted to hand-me-down stipends, literally pittance, named after the party’s slain leaders; for instance, the Benazir Income Support Programme and the like schemes. As for the Sindh cities, because they are not the party’s electoral stronghold and given the PPP’s record, they cannot expect any major development work taking place there either.
The PPP could have turned Lyari around but it has done nothing even for that district from where it has been winning elections all these years. And this is happening at a time when the devolution of many powers from the federation to the provinces has increased the financial resources available with the Sindh government considerably. No brownie points for guessing where the big money will go.
The party also has another sorry legacy, one of ‘divide and rule’. Many can argue that it did so in the case of East Pakistan also; but let’s call it ancient history now because it cannot be altered. The PPP has practically done so in Punjab by pitting Seraikis against Punjabis to spite the Sharifs (no angels themselves); but long before that in Punjab, the party spearheaded the movement to declare Ahmadis non-Muslim, and thus created a minority where none had existed before (this again was done with a view to win more votes from Punjab); it was also the PPP government of Mr. Bhutto that declared Friday as the weekly holiday and banned liquor to appease the religious right; Gen Zia through his controversial Islamisation process only built on what the PPP had started.
In Balochistan today, just to woo the khakis, it is the PPP’s ruling MPs versus their nationalist Baloch brethren whom the state and intelligence agencies continue to hound, virtually kidnapping and torturing the dissidents who conveniently keep going ‘missing’; the rest are forced to flee or to go underground; Balochistan remains virtually under siege. In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, since there aren’t many spoils to be collected in these bad times, the PPP has mercifully left the ANP alone so far; in Sindh, now by alienating the urban population, the party has broadened the rural-urban divide rather than bridging it.
Will such roguish policies win the party more votes in the next election? Probably yes. Will snubbing the US, holding it responsible for our economic woes and bad law and order, and oppressing the Baloch win the party the confidence of the armed forces? The lesson the PPP has not learnt is that if Mr. Bhutto, who also carried out a military operation in Balochistan and resurrected a demoralised army after it had lost half the country, could not pull it, no lesser mortal in the party’s fold is up to the job.
