Usman Buzdar’s appointment as the Chief Minister of the most Powerful province in Pakistan has raised eyebrows in Pakistan. People were expecting a powerful feudal, a battle hardened Punjabi politician, or a well known public servant turned politician to head the largest province of Pakistan under the PTI government. Usman Buzdar, hitherto an unknown politician, comes from an area of South Punjab called DG Khan. Its population straddles across Punjab and Baluchistan. South Punjab is itself a cauldron of deprivation. Majority of its population lives below the poverty line. No one had ever seen or heard of Usman Buzdar in national politics before. A not-so-verbose politician, Buzdar made his very first press appearance under constant prompting from PTI’s media savy politicians, who surrounded him for moral support. News emerged that in the past, Buzdar had criminal proceedings against him involving murders and that the matter was decided outside of court upon payment of large sums of money to the other party. Though the case turned out to be not quite so, Buzdar retained his appointment despite the media outrage because Imran Khan stood by his decision to appoint Buzdar with a degree of determination that disarmed the media.
Punjab is the province where Imran Khan’s arch opponents, the PML-N, have threatened to make governance difficult for the PTI through street agitation – not to mention other avenues the PML-N cadre has ample experience in traversing. Why then did Prime Minister Imran Khan choose a person like Buzdar to head the province as the Chief Minister. Buzdar looks meek compared to his predecessor, the high and mighty Shahbaz Sharif, who wore European Safari suits and designer sun glasses, and whose rich son Hamza Shahbaz is now the leader of the opposition in the Punjab.
Imran Khan seems to have decided to appoint Buzdar precisely because Khan is up against traditionally powerful opposition in Punjab. The PML-N is a party with ten years of non-stop rule in Punjab recently and several intermittent rules in the past that allowed it to entrench itself in the province in several ways. In fighting traditional power with traditional power, the PTI, a new comer in to Punjab politics, would have a comparative disadvantage. In appointing Buzdar, IK has created a novel situation. Though the move is not yet understood by political commentators, it makes sense. IK has played on the underdog effect. Victims of injustice and persecution, i.e the masses, are likely to identify with Buzdar if the PML-N stalwarts create trouble primarily to make Buzdar’s tenure difficult. Social Identity theorists tell us that the wish to correct a perceived injustice is at the heart of all political activism. If and when the PML-N opposition tries to agitate against the government in Punjab, the obvious disparity of resources of the rich PML-N cadre and poor and humble Buzdar will make the common folks, the common victims of injustice and persecution, identify with Buzdar. IK’s rise to the helm of affairs in Pakistan is itself an example of such triumph. In more ways than one, IK has preempted PML-N’s agitation through pitching Buzdar against the well known rich and mighty Punjabis who make the bulk of PML-N cadre in Punjab. As things stand now, only genuine bad performance will turn people away from Buzdar. The chance of that happening is low because Buzdar is obviously backed by a team of competent and educated individuals. As such, Buzdar’s administration is likely to be in marked contrast to the administration of Shahbaz Sharif, whose style was quintessentially autocratic. Privilege and the power of wealth lay at the core of the ten year-long PML-N rule in Punjab. It is psychologically a good time for rolling out the underdog effect (schadenfreude, as the political scientists call it). It isn’t just the David and Goliath parable. Examples in recent history tell us that the stronger a person’s sense of struggling is, the greater is his identification with the underdog. In the US, we have seen first Obama, then Trump, rise to power owing to the wide spread American wish to correct a perceived injustice.
By appointing Buzdar, Imran Khan has created a psycho-social and political quandary for the PML-N that the latter may not be able to handle wisely, given their woeful absence of wisdom in dealing with such matters.
The appointment also signifies a wish to correct a perceived injustice – lopsided development in Punjab. The call for a separate province in Southern Punjab is a result of such perception among the people of the South, which was not always poor. In the seventies, cities of South Punjab such as Multan and Rahim Yar Khan were centers of trade and generated revenue. It is only later, especially during the tenure of the Sharifs, that the South began to lag behind. Much of its development funds were redirected towards extravagant projects like the metro-bus service in northern parts of the province. The PTI appointed CM, Buzdar, is likely to address this perceived injustice as the southerners await what they believe they are entitled to; a separate province of their own.
Other effects of Buzdar’s appointment are likely to be rather indirect, such as building bridges between Punjab and Baluchistan and countering growing extremism in the region. The International Crisis Group has declared Pakistan’s South Punjab “Pakistan’s Jihadist Heartland.” Nothing counters extremism better than mass perception of adequate representation in the corridors of power. Extremism grows in deprivation and isolation.
Buzdar’s handling of his first press briefing under constant prompting by better known PTI cadre scandalized the press, but bear in mind that it is Buzdar’s “apparent ineptitude” that may lead his opponents to underestimate his potential and to make mistakes when dealing with him. Buzdar does not stand alone. I see behind him a powerful team of wise and sophisticated individuals who have slated Punjab as the lynch pin of their strategy to come back to power in the next election.
The game in the province of Punjab was unfairly rigged due to wealth and privilege. It is going to be played by a different set of rules from here on, it seems.
Zeenia Satti 