Gilani: The Prodigal Son

So, Syed Yousaf Raza Gilani has bit the dust of the political arena, his four and a quarter years at the helm of this country coming to an abrupt, screeching, and apparently, ignominious end. His administration, according to popular discourse, was marred by endemic corruption, gross ineptitude and a seemingly vast chasm between the needs and aspirations of the people and the goals and mindsets of the leaders. Hence, a clearly audible breath of relief right across the country.  However, the Gilani phenomenon is far from over, least of all in the politics of Multan.

Yousaf Raza Gilani is a scion of the grand old Gilani family of Pak Gate, Multan, and the singular individual who has taken his clan to the greatest heights since their illustrious progenitor, Syed Musa Pak Shaheed, rode into the city in 1592 AD, as myth would have it, holding aloft his own severed head and escorting his harem to safety. Thus began the infamous Qureshi-Gilani spiritual rivalry that continues to shape the flavor of Multani politics to this day. Yousaf Raza, despite having been born into the elite Makhdoom family of the Gilanis, had relatively humble beginnings in terms of wealth and landed property. He did inherit a political legacy, however, and the way he wrested political leadership from his father’s aristocratic cousin, Hamid Raza Gilani, is the stuff of legend. He defeated the formidable Hamid Saeen in the 1988 national elections through a sheer groundswell of popular support rendering obsolete the latter’s patrician methods of politicking, and breathed new life into tottering Gilani political fortunes. But, like any man starting from the absolute grassroots, Yousaf Raza had his sights set high.

Cut to March 2008: Yousaf Raza Gilani is not really a national statesman at this point. He is, however, a prime mover and shaker in Multan, and a trusted member of the PPP old guard. BB is no more. Zardari needs a Prime Minister who is both loyal and pliant and least capable of hijacking the party from under him. The egoistic Shah Mahmood and that wily old insider, Amin Fahim, just wouldn’t do. The placid Yousaf Raza is the man of the hour, slated from the very beginning to play second fiddle to Zardari’s main theme. Multan’s pride takes center-stage.

Now politics in our land of the pure is hardly a pure business. Merit and/or fair-play have little to do with it. Political power is ultimately the control on the distribution of state patronage and resources. In Pakistan, that power has traditionally been exercised by democrats, bureaucrats or the boys in khaki, to enrich themselves and a select few. It is a vicious pattern of circular favors and not one of the numerous actors on our political stage can claim to be free of it. Stories of overnight rags-to-riches abound in the Pakistani political dream. In this paradigm, I cannot even think of attempting to refute the claims that Gilani and his ilk have made illegal billions. They may very well have, and in that typically clumsy, undisguised manner of the parvenu that has left them open to such public vilification.

However, as a politician with a fundamentally local predisposition, Gilani does not seem to have dealt his constituency a bad hand. Multan district’s gleaming new roads and flyovers are testament to that. In fact, development projects at such a wide scale have been undertaken for the first time across the Seraiki belt, galvanizing the region’s recognition of its historic deprivation. Unlike many of the erstwhile political luminaries from the region, Gilani has operated as somewhat of a Seraiki icon, strengthening and promoting the identity. For the first time in two decades, cotton farmers have gotten good prices. Many a hapless youth has been given employment, perhaps violating the precept of merit, but deeply appreciated on the home-turf. Furthermore, the Gilanis have done well to shield their voters from the oppression of the Patwari and the SHO, a factor that matters more in rural politics than any power crises or corruption. And soon, Multan will begin to miss the exceptional treatment it received in power outages throughout the Gilani tenure.

Come July 19, one of Gilani’s own will easily rise on his vacated seat. A by-election in rural Pakistan, however, is seldom any measure of political popularity as the people are generally canny enough to see their advantage in voting for the party in power. Elections-2013 will prove what the home-boy really means to Multan, brutally interrupted as his ascendancy has been, winning him martyr status with the sentimental rural voter. With two sons and one brother still in assemblies, and an unparalleled standing in the PPP, the party closest to the Seraiki soul, Gilani remains a force to be reckoned with. Bets are off on whether even Makhdoom Shah Mahmood Qureshi can win back his ancestral seat from Gilani’s PPP in Multan.