After putting up an appearance at PDM’s rally in Karachi, the disunited PML-N leadership has confined itself to talk shows or interviews on private TV channels. There has been no attempt to interact with the masses through public meetings. For the time being the party has transited from confrontation to conciliation without officially announcing it.
Meanwhile PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari is on a weeklong campaign in South Punjab to recruit the ‘eletcables’. The idea is to put up a show of strength aimed at convincing the local elite that the PPP still has pockets of support thus encouraging them to join the party. In his speeches Bilawal reminded the audience that under Benazir Bhutto and Asif Ali Zardari, PPP governments provided jobs and kept prices of commodities under control while during the PTI tenure there is rampant unemployment, poverty and shrinking purchasing power. Bilawal also claimed, not without justification, that BB was the first national leader that wanted to carve out the South Punjab province. Keeping in view the next elections where the PPP will have to contend with the PML-N also, Bilawal claimed that the PTI-led government would have been overthrown with a no-confidence motion had his party not been “misled and deceived” by the leadership of the PDM. With an eye on the electables, Bilawal predicted that the next government in the country would be formed by his party, and the new premier will be a “jiyala”, so come and join it.
Bilawal Bhutto Zardari being the first major political leader to visit Dera Ghazi Khan in recent months, the PPP’s workers’ convention in the city turned into a large public gathering. Bilawal’s cavalcade received a warm welcome on Muzaffargarh Bypass also.
Bilawal’s tone and tenor remained the same in Multan despite the response being somewhat frosty. Here he managed to induct into party an exhausted crew of politicians that included two PML-Q men, an MQM ticket holder and a spiritual leader.
In June this year Asif Al Zardari had spent eight days in Lahore waiting for electables from Punjab coming to join his party. He managed to get not a single person. Will his more energetic heir succeed in obtaining the Holy Grail remains to be seen.
