NOVEMBER 2023; the aisles of the Gizri Football Stadium are jam-packed with throngs of full-throated jiyalas. A group of young PPP workers manically try to manage the crowd, extolling them to stay behind the fences.

One of the volunteers, Sumair Ali, scrambles alongside his colleagues to enforce the discipline at the sports facility, where PPP leader Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari is scheduled to appear as the chief guest who would inaugurate the facility, being reopened after renovation.

But Sumair and his fellow workers — and even those in attendance — could never have anticipated what would happen when the Bhutto scion arrived at the venue. In complete disregard of security protocols, young Bilawal mingled with the crowd.

After attending the opening ceremony and a brief customary interaction with the media, he and Karachi mayor Murtaza Wahab Siddiqi moved towards the fence and spent nearly an hour shaking hands and taking selfies with screaming fans and jiyalas.

The young chairman is trying to forge a more youthful path for the PPP, which has been demonised for years. But will he be able to shed the baggage his party has accumulated?

In those moments, not a single selfie request was turned down, and the crowd loved it too. As a result, what was supposed to be an hour-long engagement ended up lasting a good two-and-a-half hours.

“I was confused and scared for a while, fearing what may happen in case of a security breach,” recalls Ghaffar, a 33-year-old real estate agent and active party worker who was also there that fateful day.

“But the very next second, I realised that this is what we actually want from our chairman. These are the things the PPP is known for, and it is in keeping with the tradition of his grandfather (Zulfikar Ali Bhutto) and mother (Benazir Bhutto), which he is trying to revive.”

With a serious focus on the party’s revival and efforts to bring in younger leadership at all levels, Sumair and his comrades believe that Bilawal is consolidating his grip over national politics.

The 2023 transformation

Whatever the results of the upcoming polls may be, these die-hard supporters believe that he will emerge from Febr­uary 8 as a stronger, more experienced campaigner.

From taking a tough stance for elections within three months following the dissolution of the PDM government — which saw him standing against former allies who favoured a delay — to challenging his own father’s point of view, the year 2023 saw a different side of Bilawal come to fore, as he stepped out from under Asif Zardari’s shadow and showed his true colours to the masses.

Earlier, his parliamentary debut following the 2018 elections saw him commanding the opposition benches from the front rows as Imran Khan sat on the prime minister’s chair. Then, following the latter’s ouster and the formation of a PDM coalition at the Centre, Bilawal was picked to be foreign minister — the youngest in the country’s history — taking on the mantle at an extremely tricky time in global politics.

But the exposure he got during his months at the helm of the country’s foreign policy machinery gave him the kind of real-world experience he could only have dreamed of before 2018.

But has his personal growth in the national political arena helped his party in its attempts to regain what it lost over the years — popular support among the masses and the repute of being a true ‘people’s party’?

For journalist and au­­thor Nadeem Farooq Para­cha, while Bilawal’s effo­rts may not necessarily lead to an overnight reversal of the party’s political fortunes, “at least it’s a start”.

“After it began losing its vote bank in Punjab, Asif Zardari rightly began to secure Sindh. This kept the party in the larger game. Bilawal is now looking to reinvigorate his party’s dwindling vote bank in Punjab,” he says.

Quick to adapt

After an intense round on the campaign trail, some of Bilawal’s most significant statements have come in the past couple of weeks, probably the tail-end of his electoral drive, showing that he is adapting to the swiftly changing electoral scenario.

Ostensibly shaped by the need to take a more aggressive approach towards his opponents, especially in Punjab, he has doubled his criticism of the rival PML-N to woo disheartened workers and voters of other parties, including the PTI.

In fact, during a recent verbal onslaught against the PML-N leader in Chiniot, Bilawal warned Nawaz Sharif that his “politics of revenge” would harm the country and its economy if he is voted to power again. The cautionary advice came only a day after he asked PTI workers and supporters in Lahore to support him.

Then, in an interview with Reuters, he made it clear that his party would not join hands with the PML-N, or even the em­­b­a­t­­tled PTI, and instead prefer to woo independent can­didates — including de-symboled PTI hopefuls.

Bilawal knows this election is the time to build a narrative that will resonate with the youth

A paternal rebuke

Over the past year, Bilawal has spent more and more time selling the idea of bringing in a younger leadership, both within the party and at the national level. Around November last year, when the country was inching towards general elections, the PPP chairman started campaigning for the old guard to be sent home.

But before anyone else could point fingers, the young man’s words caught the attention of his own father. In a TV interview given just days after Bilawal started building this narrative, Asif Ali Zardari seemed to undermine the political maturity of the youthful PPP chairman, calling his son “emotional and inexperienced” and putting himself above everyone else when it came to key decision-making within the party.

Karachi mayor Barris­ter Murtaza Wahab Sid­di­­qi, counted among those considered quite close to Bilawal, agr­ees with the impression that the chairman is keen to reform political culture, both within the party and in national politics, by bringing in youn­ger leaders with fresh ideas.

“The PPP is a democratic party. Here, everyone has the right to express their opinion and make their argument. But once the party reaches a decision through consensus, everyone sticks to it.”

Disputing the impression that Bilawal is facing resistance from within the party’s ranks when he talks about bringing in younger leadership, he cites himself as an example. “He chose me to be the mayor of Karachi, so you can’t say that he’s unable to do the things that he wants,” Wahab says.

But for senior journalist and analyst Mazhar Abbas, who has been reporting on the party for several decades now, Mr Zardari’s statements damaged Bilawal’s position in the national political scene, even if they didn’t weaken his position within the party.

“I think those remarks were uncalled for. Calling him emotional and immature or inexperienced didn’t help the party and they proved quite damaging for Bilawal as well,” he notes.

Opportunity of youth

The vibes (to use a contemporary expression) within the party suggest that the rank and file — from the contemporaries of his mother and grandfather all the way down to the younger lot — admire him equally.

The 73-year-old PPP stalwart, Nisar Ahmed Khuhro, has his own reasons to believe in the young chairman.

“Bilawal’s key quality is that he has simple solutions to big problems, which makes him stand out from the crowd,” he says.

“He’s determined. Once he sets his mind to something, he executes it and brings it to its logical conclusion. Our long march against Imran Khan’s government is one example. When every single party of the opposition was crestfallen and had lost hope, he was the one who insisted on a vote of no-confidence and mobilised the national leadership, in line with public sentiment.”

For Mr Khuhro and younger party workers alike, Bilawal is “gradually but surely” becoming a force to be reckoned with in the national political arena.

Obviously, the PPP chairman knows well that this election is the most opportune time to build a narrative that will resonate with the youth, given that the number of young voters has surged from 46.43m in 2018 to 56.86 million this year.

This means more than 10 million new voters have come of age in the intervening six years, and if mobilised, could play a crucial role in determining the outcome of the polls.

Analysts believe this massive number of young voters, a majority of whom use social media, are not only in a position to influence opinions on online platforms, but could even alter the electoral scene in several constituencies if they turn out in large numbers on election day.

Hampered by ‘demonisation’

Here, a number of questions arise. Will the young chairman’s efforts be reflected in the results of the upcoming elections? Can Bilawal’s ‘younger leadership’ narrative attract young voters to his party? Can he succeed in his quest to become the country’s youngest prime minister?

For many, all these things are still distant dreams, for various reasons. Mr Paracha says that it takes more than just leadership skills to become a political leader, especially one that inspires the fickle youth vote.

“He still doesn’t have the kind of media muscle which, in the recent past, helped turn an old man into a so-called leader of the youth,” he says, a veiled reference to former PM Imran Khan.

“Secondly, the party Bilawal is leading has been demonised for decades. He is trying to undo this; it’s a tough task, but I believe he can succeed in the years to come,” Mr Paracha forsees.

“First, it was Imran Khan who championed an anti-PPP and PML-N narrative. That definitely damaged the repute of both parties and their leaders, and Bilawal was no exception,” says Mazhar Abbas.

“Secondly, the performance of the Sindh government is also counted [among the party’s demerits]. If the party had established good governance in Sindh, its leader would not have been facing this challenge.

For instance, while campaigning in a Punjab constituency, if you promise clean drinking water, naturally you would will asked if you have been able to provide the same in Sindh during your 15-year rule there.“

Dynastic or disruptive?

With so many question marks on the electoral process, such as controversies over electoral symbols, reservations of parties over the absence of a level playing field, and uncertainty about who is the favourite going into the Feb 8 polls, those close to the PPP chairman say that his campaign relies solely on garnering “organic votes”, rather than looking for favours from the powers that be.

But the PPP chairman’s galloping cross-country campaign, including a power show in Jati Umrah — the heart of Sharif country — show that he is still not at as much of a disadvantage as some other parties’ candidates. Indeed, he has the entire party machinery working to make his campaign a success, a luxury not available to nearly any other contender, barring someone like Maryam Nawaz, for example.

It is also difficult to gloss over his dynastic roots, given that the Bhutto name — which he chose to incorporate into his own following his mother’s assassination – gives him a definite edge no one else can even lay claim to.

Several parallels can be drawn between the political careers of Bilawal and Benazir: both took the reins of the party during difficult times, thrust into the limelight after the death of a parent. Both were educated at Oxford and command mastery in the arts of diplomacy and public speaking.

Both also suffered due to an initial disconnect from the masses, being derided for their heavily accented Urdu. While his mother was attacked for being a woman in a man’s world, Bilawal has had to fend off misogynistic attacks as well.

But like his mother, Bilawal has worked hard to overcome these shortcomings, emerging in the current campaign as the face of the PPP’s push to reclaim lost territory north of Sindh. While it is premature to say that his current efforts would result in a sea-change for the PPP, he can be credited with initiating the process of reviving its fortunes — a long-term investment that may pay off in elections to come.

Published in Dawn, January 26th, 2024