PPP chief and ex-President Asif Zardari may well have tacitly conceded that his party will not end up forming the government after the coming general election. In an interview to a private TV channel, his prediction that the next government would be a ‘national government’, including the PPP, might well be seen more as wishful thinking on how the PPP could get a share of power. On ground, it appears, the PML(N) has been earmarked to form the next government alone, as the PDM coalition did not do so well as to encourage any hope for a repetition of the experiment. PML(N) manoeuvres, most notably the electoral alliance with the PML(N), have dented the PPP’s hopes that it would obtain some seats from Karachi and Hyderabad, which had been raised by its winning the mayoralties of these two cities. Mr Zardari’s remarks reflected the soul-searching within the PPP as to whether it got what it had hoped for from the reconciliatory policies with the establishment that it has.
It is perhaps a reflection of that internal debate that Mr Zardari remarked that party Co-Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari still had to ‘learn politics’. Mr Bhutto Zardari is known to have his doubts about the wisdom of the policy of reconciliation, and Mr Zardari’s remarks are a way of deflecting his stances. Mr Zardari may have also been signalling that he is in charge of the party, and no one else. This is not the first time that Mr Zardari has twitted Mr Bhutto Zardari with his relative inexperience, but it does seem that that is not a policy with a future. Sooner or later, and perhaps sooner, Mr Zardari will have to accept that Mr Bhutto Zardari is experienced enough to lead the party.
The PPP may have to reconcile itself to remaining out of power at the centre in the next tenure, but Mr Zardari need not concede this so early, even before the election programme has been announced. It is one of the functions performed by party leaders to keep up the hopes of the party faithful, rather than to engage in the sort of brutal honesty Mr Zardari showed. However, it should not be forgotten that Mr Zardari has developed a reputation as a formidable political operator, and these remarks may well form part of some greater streategy that is presently only in his brain.
