The Bhutto heir is attempting to chart a more youthful course for the PPP, a party that has faced criticism for an extended period. However, the question remains: can he successfully rid the party of the burdens it has accumulated?
NOVEMBER 2023; the aisles of the Gizri Football Stadium are jam-packed with throngs of full-throated PPP supporters. A group of young PPP workers frantically try to manage the crowd, urging them to stay behind the fences.
One of the volunteers, Sumair Ali, hurries alongside his colleagues to enforce discipline at the sports facility, where PPP leader Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari is scheduled to appear as the chief guest to inaugurate the facility, which is reopening after renovation.
However, 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 enthusiastic fans and PPP supporters.
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 favored a delay — to challenging his own father’s point of view, the year 2023 saw a different side of Bilawal come to the fore, as he stepped out from under Asif Zardari’s shadow and showed his true colors 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.