People146;s power?

Most of Pakistan greeted Benazir. But note that she8217;s already playing the Sindh vs Punjab card

All power to the people. That seemed to be the mood on the streets of Karachi when Benazir Bhutto landed here to an unprecedented welcome, ending her self-imposed exile spanning eight years. It was unprecedented because Karachi, though Bhutto8217;s hometown, is not her party8217;s stronghold. The city has been ruled by her arch-rivals, who have taken turns at power. These include Altaf Hussain8217;s MQM, the ruling Muslim League and the rightwing Jamaat-i-Islami. Bhutto8217;s People8217;s Party has, at best, managed to get only a couple of seats from this city of 15 million in the past.

But Thursday was a historic day by all accounts. It saw the coming together of the urban and rural Sindhis, Punjabis, Pathans, Seraikis, the Baloch, Mohajirs, Kashmiris, Makranis, and what have you, in the great ethnic mix of Pakistan. An affirmation that the People8217;s Party still manages to cut across all ethnicities, social classes, faiths, and so on. There was no distinction between BB8217;s supporters as the sweltering sea of people waved party flags, flooding the city8217;s main artery 8212; Sharae Faisal 8212; waiting for their leader to arrive. The melting pot included the minorities in large numbers: Hindus, Christians, the scheduled castes. The mighty feudal landlords and the city socialites were seen rubbing shoulders with dispossessed peasants from the rural hinterland, the industrial workers and the urban jobless.

The spectacle presented a sharp contrast to Nawaz Sharif8217;s September 10 homecoming in Islamabad, where not only the people at large were conspicuous by their absence but even those holding high offices within his faction of the Muslim League were prevented from coming to the airport. It8217;s easy to stop a few hundred people from greeting their leader, but what do you do when hundreds of thousands turn up on the occasion? You just sit back and watch. That8217;s precisely what the MQM and its ruling partner the, Sindh Muslim League, did on Thursday.

For the MQM the decision not to obstruct Bhutto8217;s arrival home was a studied, if painful, one. It was seen as a move to avoid a showdown. The MQM could have mobilised crowds as big as those mobilised by the People8217;s Party. It was also seen as an opportunity to wash away the shame of May 12 when the MQM, through its street power, prevented the entry of the then suspended chief justice of Pakistan, who had landed in Karachi but was forced to board a plane back to Islamabad, as dozens of deaths were reported in the city as a result of armed clashes between the judge8217;s and the MQM8217;s supporters.

From the other Sindh ruling coalition partner, Dr Arbab Ghulam Rahim of the Muslim League, who is also the chief minister, the reaction to Bhutto8217;s arrival lacked all grace. He blew hot and cold for days before Bhutto8217;s landing in Karachi, asking the police to remove People8217;s Party8217;s welcome banners and awnings from the streets, an order that apparently fell on deaf ears. The reason could be that the majority of the police in Karachi come from interior Sindh, which is Bhutto8217;s undisputed fiefdom. Between a charismatic Bhutto and a lacklustre chief minister who is seen as a stooge of Islamabad, the choice as to whom to obey was clear among the force8217;s recruits.

The reaction from the Chaudhry cousins of the ruling Muslim League in Punjab 8212; who feel that they have done more than what they owed to Pervez Musharraf by extending their unequivocal support to him since 1999 8212; was equally distasteful. The Punjab chief minister went on a rampage against Bhutto, trashing her as the daughter of the man who broke up Pakistan in 1971. 8220;She and her party don8217;t have the ground to stand on anywhere in Pakistan,8221; he thundered. A clear indication that the Chaudhrys fear that the ground would slip from under their own feet if the forthcoming general election is to be a fair one.

That said, it must be conceded that Bhutto has lost some ground in Pakistan8217;s most populous, and thus most influential, province. Her playing the Sindh 8216;card8217;, as it is termed, on the eve of her arrival home, when she drew a stark comparison between the treatment meted out to former prime ministers from Sindh and Punjab, is not likely to win her brownie points with many disgruntled Punjab voters.

Story continues below this ad

When asked what she would do if the Supreme Court annulled the recent presidential ordinance granting her amnesty from corruption cases, she lashed out at the court, demanding to know why it was the court8217;s prerogative to send her father to the gallows. Was it not just because he was from Sindh, while the same court kept mum when Nawaz Sharif, after being convicted, was conveniently sent into exile? If her case were to be treated any differently now, she would chalk it down to her Sindhi origins and nothing else. This is just about the line of argument that would strengthen her opponent8217;s position in Punjab. He has always accused her of being anti-Punjab.

And this perhaps was the reason why she broke the tradition this time round of launching her election campaign from Sindh instead of Lahore, where Z.A. Bhutto had launched the People8217;s Party back in 1967, and where she herself had returned in triumph to a mammoth welcome in 1986. But even in Karachi on Thursday, no less than an estimated 100,000 party workers had come all the way from Punjab to receive their leader.

It is some measure of the public mood that Benazir Bhutto has re-emerged on the political scene as a phenomenon called the 8216;hope for the underdog8217;. The trappings said it all 8212; hundreds of thousands of the dispossessed from across Pakistan descended on Karachi to greet her.

The writer is an editor with Dawn, Karachi