Everyone is discussing what made PPP supremo Asif Ali Zardari suddenly change from a peace-maker to a warrior and challenge the most powerful of all the forces that count in the land - that too at a time when the force was enjoying political and popular support in its mission of getting the blighted nation rid of the curse of terrorism.

The overwhelming view is that the recent Rangers’ actions to clear Karachi of the mafias - the paramilitary force says collect Rs230 billion annually to fund terror groups and their political patrons - made the PPP cry. That makes Zardari’s “inept outburst”, as the media and PPP’s detractors called it, sound cries for survival.

But others see it rather as a battle cry for revival of the PPP in what its founder Zulfikar Ali Bhutto used to call “the bastion of power”.

Political pundits and TV talk shows hair-split media reports that the Rangers have all but taken de-facto charge of the Sindh government, reducing the PPP chief minister Qaim Ali Shah to a mere figure head, and surmise that it could be the reason that the former president blurted out a challenge to the khakis. Even if partially true, shouldn’t the development be as scary to the political parties ruling other provinces deemed as corrupt in the public eye?

In background discussions PPP leaders, some belonging to the party’s inner circle, took Mr Zardari’s salvo as a policy shift instead. “For quite some time, Zardari has been under immense pressure from within the party to get rid of his mantra of ‘reconciliation’ as it was hurting the party’s image and weakening it,” explained one of them.

Indeed, media persons, in their usual frenzy, ignored other potent remarks made by Mr Zardari - that lack of implementation of the 18th Amendment can push the provinces to internecine wars. Even his repeated assertions that his party has decided to emerge from the low profile it had been keeping since the 2013 general election and enter ‘active politics’ were not ‘duly’ reported by the media, he said.

Another PPP leader informed that a series of meetings took place after Bilawal Bhutto’s unplanned return home from a rather extended six-month stay in London early this month. “Discussions in all sittings centred on how to revive the party in the national politics. Majority of the participants said they had had enough of the policy of co-existence, be it with MQM in Sindh or the PML-N at the centre,” he said.

PPP sources confirmed that the Punjab chapter “forcefully persuaded” the party leadership in these meetings in Karachi, to activate the PPP in Punjab as Imran Khan’s PTI is fast filling the political space in the province. It is evident to all that PPP won only two National Assembly seats from Punjab. And despite renewed efforts, all it got in the recent by-elections, cantonment board and local government elections in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was the third place, not even second.

“PPP figured nowhere in the competitions,” they said.  

While all agreed to strive to increase PPP’s presence in all forums, it fell to Asif Ali Zardari as top party leader to be the standard bearer.

“After Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s refusal to meet Mr Zardari, I think we have achieved the objective of parting ways with the PML-N,” said the PPP source.  “Onwards, the PPP will only play an opposition party,” thundered a close aide of Mr Zardari. “He has cast the first stone and in the coming weeks and moths you will see a changed PPP.”

 His bluster rang out when, soon after Mr Zardari’s caustic remarks mainly targeting military leadership, PPP legislators upped the ante against the ruling PML-N in both the houses of the parliament. Speaking on the budget on Wednesday, Shazia Marri unequivocally targeted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif as a politician nurtured by the military dictator Gen Ziaul Haq and Aijaz Hussain Jakhrani accused the federal government of “doing the establishment’s bidding”.  

If Mr Zardari’s close aide, who refused to speak on record, is to be believed, there will be no more politics of reconciliation and PML-N will be given a tough time, both inside and outside the parliament. The PPP has decided to bring Bilawal Bhutto into the National Assembly as if to train him for coming battles leading to the next general elections in 2018.

For the moment, just the PPP co-chairman’s opening salvo is echoing. Mr Zardari sounded a very different politician on Tuesday evening from the one known over the years for his toothy grin and ever-willingness to form alliances, even with his sworn enemies. He wore a stern look and clinched his fists while hitting out at the top brass of the country.

Sindh Rangers’ zeal in their crusade against corruption and terrorist groups in Karachi may prove a tipping point but the fallout would be largely political. “We in the PPP know the only way to survive in the national politics is that Mr Zardari play not a second fiddle but the role of real opposition,” a PPP insider told Dawn.

Published in Dawn, June 19th, 2015

On a mobile phone? Get the Dawn Mobile App: Apple Store | Google Play