AS the PPP gears up for the elections, the impact of Benazir Bhutto’s absence is beginning to unfold.

It took her 30 years to structure the party the way it is. Everything revolved around her. The norms of things big and small, they were all set by her. PPP workers and leaders — everybody looked up to her even for minute things. They are still trying to fathom the enormity of the loss. And at a time when she was needed the most.

The biggest task before Asif is to keep the party together. Not just the Sindhi members of the PPP but the numerically stronger Punjab leadership. There is a motley crowd of intellectuals, feudals, lawyers to downright ‘jiyalas’ to deal with. Jahangir Badr, a Lahori to the core, may be poles apart from the sophisticated Makhdoom Amin Fahim. There is a diverse array of characters like Joji Butt, Meeda Kashmiri, Arif Faisalabadi on low end of the spectrum and the suave breed of politicians like Raza Rabbani, Aftab Shabaan Mirani and Nisar Khuhro on the other. Benazir perfected the art of keeping them together in 30 years. Asif will not have the luxury of that much time. For the time being, the lure of elections and power is keeping everybody at bay. And together. Come elections, whatever the results, the situation will change. Here starts the touchy part.

The biggest challenge for Asif Zardari is more personal than political. He needs to get rid of his past for the sake of his future. In simple words the man is haunted by his friends, you know which kind. He must have reflected a lot on this issue in his eight long years in jailbut to change your personality after half a century is easier said than done. The new Ceaser, like in most political parties, was surrounded by courtiers, each one of them vying for a pound of flesh. The journalist team, of which I was a member, missed the flight to Sukkur because the ‘Saiths’ of Karachi, the wheeler-dealer kind, got us offloaded. Everybody wanted to be in Larkana. We found some of them still waiting outside Asif’s room when we landed in Naudero after a rough bus ride of 12 hours. Also present were the Mafioso types who shared jail days with Asif. Now, what should he do? If he sees them we get a juicy story. If he does not, that’s not Asif the ‘Yaron ka yar’.

The good old H K Burki once advised Asif when he was bragging that he stands by his friends come hail or shine: “Let me tell you ‘mundia,’ it may be a virtue to be a sincere friend in private life, it becomes a sin when you doit in public office at the cost of merit.”

It was obvious that Asif was making an effort to heed the advice of the late Burki Sahib but it’s not as simple as it sounds. The mix of people in Naudero and their reactions gave a glimpse of the difficulties that he faces. A circus of sorts was going on among the courtiers. The most interesting was the tussle among the battery of media managers. No wonder Asif is messing up by exposing himself overly to media.

For us, the fellow penpushers, Farhatullah Babar and Sherry Rehman, were good enough. But there was an extra troika of media maidens competing with each other for the ears of the Ceaser. One of them, wife of a one-time Bhutto-hater, has had a shouting match with another competitor. She is now quite close to the PPP power centre. Quite a comeback for a man who remains in self-exile in the USA, especially after his spilling, at one stage, all the PPP beans that he had at his disposal to become part of the Musharraf regime.

In any case, sooner or later, the impact of Benazir’s absence was bound to unfold. For many, Benazir’s legacy may be bigger than her father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. One, she was a continuation of ZAB whose political career was relatively short. It spanned a little over a decade if we take the PPP formation as the milestone. In Benazir’s case, a whole generation grew up with her.

“She was a national darling that we had become accustomed to having around,” aptly said a colleague. “Either you loved her or loved to hate her, there was no middle way.” That she was a woman added to her courageous aura.

Zulfikar Bhutto was controversial in some ways. He was accused of being unfair to friends and rough to his foes. He was known to be a man of strong emotions, harsh opinions and had some moral inadequacies. Benazir was a soft and chaste person with impeccable moral record. There was just one accusation against her: financial corruption. She may have washed that stain by, knowingly, giving her life. That the present PPP is more of Benazir’s party than of her father may seem valid.

Her death has evoked many questions. Will the PPP survive her absence? How will the second tier of PPP react to Asif’s ascension in the long run? Will party maintain its national character? Is there a possibility of a merger with Ghanwa Bhutto? How and when will the next generation of Bhuttos-Bilawal, Fatima and Zulfikar enter the arena? How will the provincial wings of the party react to the new realities? How will Amin Fahim and the rest of the Sindhi leadership behave? What will be Aitzaz Ahsan’s role? Who will join which group in the new power play? The fundamental question remains that how will Asif Zardari carry Benazir’s legacy.

Whatever the answers to these queries, the fact remains that the best person suited to keep the party together at this stage is Asif Zardari. Amin Fahim, Aitzaz Ahsan, Aftab Shabaan Mirani, nobody could have done it better than Asif. Like it or not, as said by Safdar Abbasi in a recent visit to Naudero, it had to be a Sindhi and from the Bhutto family.

The fact that the PPP is contesting the elections in one piece confirms Benazir’s wisdom of nominating Asif for the party leadership. So far, so good, that is. Asif Zardari, one has to admit, acted wisely by helping normalise the violent situation in Sindh within four days. If he had not made extra effort to curb the wave of violence the material and human losses might have been colossal. The anger in Sindh was such that it could have possibly led to a secessionist mood. The anguish was widespread after a team of journalists took a tour of interior of Sindh. A group of Sindhi students were particularly perturbed over the advertisement campaign sponsored by the Punjab Chaudhrys announcing that Muslim League House in Lahore would shelter Punjabi victims of Sindh.

“You show us a single case where any Punjabi has been victimised because of his ethnicity,” said Bashir Solangi, President of Larkana PSF. “We are the real victims, we are here since BB’s funeral and all of us have cases registered against us back home in our villages.” The filing of cases against PPP leaders, at a time when the scars of BB’s assassination are still fresh, is not a good omen for the federation.

Asif Zardari deserves credit that he has been overly careful in curbing parochial sentiments. It was not easy in a situation where everybody was talking about Islamabad parcelling four body bags of Bhutto family in four decades. In fact, the Sindhi nationalists were trying to capitalize on the situation, egging PPP workers against the establishment symbolized by the Punjab and the army. Pervaiz Elahi’s ads were providing just what they needed.