Bilawal has a fair chance of reviving his party

Bilawal has proved himself to be quite quick on the uptake. There has been a tremendous improvement in the quality of his public addresses, lately. Not only has he brushed up on his Urdu in a record short time, his delivery too is immaculate now. One could see a marked improvement in the speech delivered by him in an election rally in Bhimber, Azad Kashmir the other day. The contents of his speech were also weighty and he intelligently touched upon the issues and problems being faced by the people . Bilawal has a fair chance of making inroads into national politics and putting a new life into his party if he manages to revive its original manifesto drafted by J. A. Rahim, one of the founding father of the PPP. The common man, all and sundry, had flocked to it because its leaders once were near to the have-nots, they used to speak their language and rubbed their shoulders with them. The PPP started losing its mass appeal when its leaders distanced themselves from the common man and when the elite hijacked it. It touched its nadir between 2008 and 2013 when an entirely different brand of politicians started calling the shots in the party who had no chemistry with the man in the street. Small wonder it was reduced to a regional party from a national one during the polls in 2013. The fear is that if its leadership won’t mend its way it might be wiped off in the general elections in 2018 in Sind also where it has been running the show since 2013.
Bilawal seems to be the only hope of the well wishers of this party but his success in the future polls hinges to a great extent on the way he reorganises his party. He needs to get rid of the dead wood, the rank opportunists and the corrupt element within his party who had been responsible for reducing the public esteem of this party owing to their financial shenanigans. To start with he should hold intra-party elections forthwith so that true representatives of the party come to the fore. Nominations from the top on key party cadres at district and provincial level be avoided. The high command of the party should revert to its original manifesto which had made it darling of the masses in late 1960s. Let us admit that though ZA Bhutto had joined the great majority in 1979 his charisma still lasts even after about 40 years of his demise.