- Time to do address the one-province party problem
For the first time in 12 years, since her untimely death, Benazir’s death anniversary was not an affair restricted to a day of mourning at Garhi Khuda Bakhsh. It was instead organised as a public gathering at Liaquat Bagh where the two-time prime minister and leader of the PPP was slain in a gun-and-suicide bomb attack. Permission for the rally had been granted by the Lahore High Court after the district administration of Rawalpindi had initially declined, deeming it a security risk. The attempt to block the rally was just another example of the PTI government’s hostility towards the PPP and its chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, forcing him to lash out. As a result, the rally primarily circled around speeches taunting Imran Khan and his government for being ‘selected’ and ‘incompetent’ while also criticising them for damaging the democratic process. Bilawal went a few steps further by predicting that there would be fresh elections in 2020. Perhaps that was an ‘in-the-moment’ statement considering how the PPP is in no way ready to contest another election at this time, especially in North Punjab where the party has been rendered almost non-existent. For the past two election cycles the PPP’s success has remained confined to Sindh where it can depend on the ‘jiyala’ vote even if some of the more conventional voters have switched parties. This has enabled it to run the province for over ten years during which time, in Punjab, the PML-N ran things, only to lose the province to the PTI by a very slight margin in 2018.
The PPP emerged as the second largest party in the Punjab Provincial Assembly in the 2008 elections with 81 seats but this number fell drastically to an embarrassing 8 in the 2013 polls which could be attributed to campaigning restrictions due to security threats, but the 2018 result of only 7 seats cannot be justified using the same excuse. It is time Bilawal use the advice and experience of the senior party members around him and the younger lot in the party as well, to prepare a comprehensive strategy on how to attract the disgruntled PTI and PML-N voter and re-enter Punjab politics.
