Looking for the right conversation

If democracy is a conversation, then our politicians don’t seem to be very adept at it. True that the conversation seems to have started, with the PMLN firing the opening salvos, first with the MQM and then with Maulana Fazlur Rehman of the JUIF, but so far, it is more conspicuous for what it isn’t saying than for what it is.

Not just that. Somethings already seem to be losing their way in translation. PMLN’s insistence, for example, that it is now in an electoral alliance with the MQM is lacking support from the latter who continues to be circumspect about the content of their joint press conference last week. A veiled mention by Maulana Fazlur Rehman of his conversation with the PMLN supremo, a couple of days later, didn’t say what the two leaders expected for themselves from their alliance, but was quite eloquent on what they didn’t want the PPP to get.

It is still too early to get a clear idea of what the electoral field may look like come polling day, but the opening hand from one of the main players does provide some clues to what the conduct of the game may be like.

The initial hullabaloo over PMLN’s reinvention as the new king’s party seems to be waning. In less than a month since Mian Nawaz Sharif’s return to Pakistan, its second string leadership seems to have become somewhat circumspect about their earlier confidence that their party will romp home on its own steam. Still struggling to find a way to counter its disastrous 16-month outing in Islamabad, Mian sahib also seems to be grappling with the shock of how much his hometown has changed during his four-year self-imposed exile.

Takhat Lahore, as it has come to be known because of its centrality to whatever power-play takes place in Islamabad, is not what he left behind in 2019. Never known for its rational choices, be it politics or food, the city seems to want to cling to its new hero, come what may. And everyone but PTI is responsible for the fact that the hero is in jail while his party is in tatters. That is Lahori logic at its most potent.

Normally, in view of our recent political history, anyone winning about half of Punjab’s 140-odd national seats would be confident of marching into the capital as the next government. This arithmetic seems to have gone awry against our Lahori logic, a logic that appears to have cast its magic over most other urban centres in the province as well.

Punjab today seems more fragmented than ever before, and the battle for its heart and mind is no longer between one king’s party and the one that has earned the king’s wrath. Of course the party suffering royal wrath is there, but the one aligned against it is no longer a single coherent unit.

Instead, we have an as yet untested entity culled from the PTI and still looking like a miscalculated sum of various parts than a consistent whole. Then, we have PMLN groaning under the combined weight of PDM baggage and its leader’s long absence from Pakistan. And one great unknown – the PTI voter, which is looking highly unlikely to bow to the grand design of our well-wishers unlike ever before. Compared to all other previous elections, this one single factor makes Punjab more unpredictable than it has ever looked since Partition.

Hence the PMLN’s urgency in forging alliances outside of Punjab. The MQM was their first target – a party still in the process of recognising itself after repeated reinventions. Its history with the PMLN is a bitter one, with its first two alliances with the big brother from Punjab ending in military operations. Also, given that its influence is concentrated in two of Sindh’s largest cities – Karachi and Hyderabad – it is not quite clear at this stage how much of this geographically constrained support it is willing to dilute for PMLN, and in exchange of what. Clearly, there are miles to go before the two can sleep together.

The same seems to be the case between PMLN and JUIF, though with different dynamics. JUIF has historically vied for the same conservative vote bank as the PMLN in Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa. And it has had a much less problematic time allying with the PPP than with PMLN. But JUIF’s veteran leader seems too miffed at the PPP for now to treat it as an alternative, although this might mean that, as polling day approaches, he will find himself tackling the question of how much to concede to its Punjabi ally out of a potential pie that looks pretty small to begin with.

True that it is just the start of the conversation leading into the February 8 polls next year, but it is a start that is lacking both in coherence as well as objectives. May the next few weeks find the missing ingredients, or we may be looking at one of the most chaotic elections in the country’s history.