Khan might be an honest and a great human being who wants the best for the country, but the blind followers forget that the same Noon and PPP people they bash day in and out are with Khan at the moment. They have been part of the destruction over the past decades. This is where the major problem lies. All the lotas have been part of the loot maar. He started in 1996 to fight against the corruption and injustices and ended up shaking the same corrupt hands. Most people will never forget when Khan said to Sheikh Rasheed that he will never hire him as a chaprasi and guess what - the same unwanted chaprasi is in his cabinet. He was elected on the basis of bringing in change - well you can't bring in the change because of lotas you have surrounded yourself with. Its a scam.
Unfortunately we have been here before. So called ‘electables’ climbed onto the platforms of the Muslim League in the 1940s and the PPP in the 1970s. In both cases, the result was increased factionalism and the blunting of progressive designs. The Progressive Bloc deserted the ML after partition. Mian Iftikharuddin dramatically quit as refugee minister in 1948 citing the obstructive stance of landed interests to meaningful land reforms.
Similarly before the 1970 elections, debate raged as to whether the gentry should be courted by the PPP. Those gathered around Sheikh Muhammad Rashid were acutely aware that the PPP's radicalism could be subverted from within if it opened its doors to the fickle notables and therefore proposed restrictions on their entry. On the other hand, the high command (‘central cell’) of the PPP was ready to welcome gentry politicians into its ranks. Crucially they had the support of Bhutto. The eventual entry of political careerists into its ranks was fatal for the prospect of the PPP pursuing radical social change.
Within PTI a similar tension existed with the old guard attempting to resist the capture of the party by the professional politicians. Imran Khan, advancing in years and desperate to be Prime Minister, was not willing to take any risks and welcomed notables onto the PTI bandwagon. “One man alone without an electable team can only do so much” he said. He could not “find angels to join the PTI.” It is not just votes that such figures bring but also crucially funding.
Does this mean that a party need only seek the support of ‘electables’ to be sure of victory? I don’t believe so.
First, it is facile to believe that leaders only lead a herd. In fact they are also subject to pressures and voters are not passive bystanders. Even as far back as the run-up to the 1946 elections, according to historian Ian Talbot in his book, Freedom’s Cry, “The growing groundswell of support for the League pressurized its Muslim landlord opponents to desert the Unionist Party.” In the 1970 elections, we would do well to remember that while many landed notables joined from Sindh, in the Punjab, they joined only
after the 1970 elections. The exceptions were Sadiq Hussain Qureshi and Chadhury Fazal Elahi, both of whom joined just before the 1970 elections. In the case of Qureshi popular support for the PPP seems to have swayed him.
Secondly, ideology is not irrelevant. Phillip Jones, in his comprehensive work on the rise of the PPP, meticulously examined the 1970 election results in the Punjab, managing to drill down to the level of polling stations. Local ties certainly mattered, but he also pointed clearly to “the ‘horizontal’ character of the pro-PPP vote patterns in the 1970 elections…the PPP vote largely represented a rejection of traditional (parochial or vertical) loyalties in reference for perceived economic and social interests, as articulated in the PPP programme.”
His conclusion based on solid research was: “in fifty-four (or 65.9 per cent) of eighty-two NA constituencies in Punjab, majorities or near-majorities rejected parochial considerations and voted for a party that promised to break open elite institutions and to broaden access to education, medical care, commercial enterprise, industrial management, land ownership and political decision-making.”