When the public bitterly tuned out of PPP, evident in the results of last year’s general elections, there was – naturally – a sense of confusion among PPP political figures in answering one simple question: How do we win them back? After all, dynastic politics hardly fool anyone in Pakistan where, despite considerable social and political progress in democracy, electoral politics still remain largely a family enterprise. It doesn’t take a detailed survey of our history to come to the conclusion that, yes, a set of families continue to dominate Pakistan’s legislatures rendering them into oligarchies. You don’t need an analyst to spell that out for you.
It is for this reason, the proclamation by PPP’s young patron-in-chief Bilawal Bhutto to take its young leadership through an overhaul only solicits eye-rolling from the public. The irony is lost on no one: We are informed righteously by a young man who inherited political power through his maternal family that Pakistan can only attain autonomy through ‘fresh blood’. The ‘fresh blood’ is curiously required away from main leadership powers and more on the periphery of public relations. The goal is to introduce a new supply of blood in this stale body through its students’ organization – Peoples Students Federation – by establishing wings at union council level. What’s more – and this is where it gets interesting – the party seeks new faces that can captivate the public into meaningful dialogue through social and conventional media. Ergo, the party seeks a better brand image for the same old message.
Our qualm with the archetypal lack of sincerity aside, one must admit that it is a clever strategy. Given how convenient it is to generate hype online and pool in endorsers through social media especially, PPP’s recipe for public engagement is squarely based on consumerism. If the product – PPP’s political image here – is sassy enough like Bilawal’s unending barrage of tweets and has several new faces to spice affairs up, the jiyalay might have a chance at entering the national arena of politics once again, instead of being constricted to an arid Sindh.
This is not to discredit PPP entirely. While the party has contributed its fair share in empowering the ordinary citizen, it is also crucial to state that the nub of the problem is ever transparent: Pure democracy is rarely achieved through dynastic lineages, much less through amplified social media presence and, well, sassy tweets.