Why Muzamil ranks PPP's 2024 manifesto last of three

Why a manifesto is worth reading

This is the second episode of Dil Ki Baat. Muzamil is working through the manifestos of Pakistan’s three biggest parties: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, the Pakistan Peoples Party and the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz. The previous episode covered the PTI. This one takes on the PPP.

He starts by answering the usual objection. People say a manifesto is boring, that parties only make slogans and will do what they like once in power. Muzamil disagrees. A manifesto shows how a leader thinks. It will not all be implemented, because that depends on how many seats a party wins, which changes need new laws, and which need Senate approval. “But you understand the thinking,” he says. “The letter and spirit may not be implemented, but you can see the direction.”

His second reason is structural. “In the Pakistani electoral system, individuals do not mean anything, parties mean everything,” he argues. In the end, one prime minister forms a cabinet of 10 to 30 people, and that cabinet does the work. Most members of the assembly vote the way the party tells them. So the party’s vision is what counts, and the manifesto is the best place to read it.

He also points out that some of the smartest people in each party write these documents: people from the development sector, academia and consulting. Even someone with no interest in politics can learn how each party sees education, health or the economy. He would rather people debate those ideas than call each other thieves.

The shape of the PPP’s plan

The PPP’s biggest headings, in Muzamil’s reading, are economic empowerment and inclusive growth, then education, health and women’s rights. He links this to the party’s history. It was once a socialist party, and its DNA, as he puts it, is still about caring for the poorest and for workers.

Two other areas get unusual space: climate change and foreign policy. His explanation is personal to the party’s leadership. Bilawal Bhutto, the PPP’s candidate for prime minister, was foreign minister during the floods under the PDM government. He believes Sherry Rehman, from the PPP, was climate change minister at the time. Both worked closely with international bodies on flood financing.

Muzamil thinks the party learned something from that experience. Pakistan’s carbon footprint is small next to India, China, America and the West. Yet it is one of the countries most exposed to climate disasters. He rejects the view that asking for climate finance is begging. If it were the core policy, he says, it would be foolish. As one part of a wider plan, it makes sense. Climate financing is becoming its own vertical, and in 10 to 15 years he expects it to be a major part of global economics.

The economic agenda: slogans without a mechanism

This is where Muzamil is most critical. He expected the PPP to bring intellectual depth, because that has been his personal experience of the party. Instead, he found the economic section plain. “It is largely sloganeering,” he says. He compares it to a party coming to power for the first time.

The party sets out five pillars for what it calls a new Peoples Economy. They are regaining economic stability, investing in change through more public and private investment, protecting the vulnerable, fixing the fiscal imbalance, and managing debt and external resources. It promises to raise the tax-to-GDP ratio to 15% over five years. Muzamil puts the current figure at around 8.5 to 9%. He welcomes the fact that all three parties now name the fiscal imbalance, where the government pays out more in interest than it takes in.

He also notices an ideological shift. In his reading, the PML-N is firmly capitalist and the PPP was firmly socialist, with the PTI in the middle. This time he sees the PTI moving towards socialism and the PPP moving slightly towards the free market. On core ideology, he now finds the PPP and PTI very similar, even if the depth of their documents differs.

His sharpest example is wages. The manifesto promises an 8% rise in real income for wage earners. If inflation is 30%, that means raising wages by 38% a year. Start from 40,000 rupees and keep raising it at that rate, and within five years the figure passes 1 lakh. “Nobody can pay 1 lakh rupees,” he says. “Your economy is not conducive to it.” In his view, the result would be an economic slowdown. The promise has no plan behind it.

He makes a similar point about the education and farming sections. They promise school within 30 minutes of travel for primary pupils and 60 minutes for middle and secondary, a fund for children in rural and low-income urban areas, and a university in every district. Farmers get seeds, a urea subsidy and help with marketing. Many sections, he says, read like the most generic answer a chatbot would give.

Where the work has been done

Muzamil is careful to credit the sections with real detail. Health has some depth, with IVF centres, family planning counsellors and national registries, though he finds none of it radical. He praises the focus on mental health and drug use, which he did not see in the other parties’ manifestos.

Women’s rights get three to four pages, and he calls this a core PPP pillar. The plans include gender-responsive budgeting, interest-free or low-interest credit for women, vocational training, and land reform to raise women’s ownership of farmland. He likes the land idea. In Pakistan, land is wealth and power, so ownership would empower women directly. He also praises CNIC registration for women, a code of conduct against character assassination, and legal recognition of single parents.

He has mixed feelings on one proposal: raising reserved seats for women from 17% to 33%. He worries about elite capture. Many reserved seats, he says, go to the relatives of politicians. “At 17% it was not happening, so at 33% it will not happen either.” He suggests separate elections where only women stand, so that more grassroots women reach the assemblies.

Social protection shows the same split. The goal of ending severe food insecurity for 4.5 million people within five years comes with no method. “How? No idea,” he says. Then comes a concrete plan. The party would end about 800 billion rupees of untargeted subsidies, move the money into the targeted BISP framework, and raise social protection spending from 0.6% to 1.2% of GDP. “This is the sort of depth that I expected in a lot of other areas,” he says. He notes that all parties promise to cut subsidies, which will bring a wave of price rises for the middle class.

The human rights section also earns praise. It covers the protection of journalists, torture, enforced disappearances, death penalty reform, oversight of intelligence agencies by law, prison reform, daycare centres, and a ban on children under 18 in domestic service. It promises to implement the 2018 transgender law as written. The sections on children, minorities and population are detailed, with a target fertility rate of 2.2 and population growth of 1.1% by 2030. He also highlights new labour protections for gig workers on apps such as Bykea, Careem, InDrive, Uber and Foodpanda.

Foreign policy: the strongest section, and what is missing

Muzamil rates the foreign policy section the best of the three manifestos he read. It runs to 8 to 10 pages and sets out how Pakistan should take part in a changing global order and an Asian century. He connects this to the party’s history: Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was foreign minister before he became prime minister, and Bilawal Bhutto’s last job was the same.

The section covers Afghanistan, with a promise of non-interference. On Kashmir, it rejects any compromise on India’s 5 August move, says there is no military solution, and calls for dialogue with New Delhi under UN resolutions. It supports trade and cooperation with India, including a possible gas pipeline. Muzamil agrees on trade. Rivals still trade, he notes, and India and China trade despite their disputes. The section then turns to the Middle East and the Gulf, the United States, the EU and GSP status, Africa, Latin America and the SCO.

Then he points out what is absent. “China is not mentioned. Iran is not mentioned,” he says. Russia, which he sees as a possible source of cheaper energy, is not mentioned either.

Muzamil’s verdict

Muzamil ranks the PPP manifesto third of the three. His first reason is the lack of depth, which surprises him because the party was in government ten years earlier. Every party promises to care for poor children and women and to fix the economy. “How you will do it is what is important,” he says.

His second reason is tone. Public frustration, in his view, is high. The economy is in bad shape and Pakistan is far behind on human development. Economists and businesspeople keep telling him the system needs structural change. He does not find that urgency in this document. He uses a job interview analogy. Pakistan is a company close to bankruptcy. The PTI says it needs a complete restructuring. The PPP says the company is fine and only needs a better manager. “It will be business as usual,” he concludes.

His third point is about direction. He describes a world splitting into two camps: China, Russia and much of the global south on one side, and America, Europe and, increasingly, India on the other. Because the manifesto engages with America and India in detail and leaves out China, Iran and Russia, his reading is that a PPP government would move Pakistan into the western camp. He contrasts this with the PTI’s stated aim of neutrality and independent decisions. He does not call either path right. He asks viewers to decide which way they think Pakistan should go.

He ends by asking for intellectual critique in return, and urges viewers to read all three manifestos on the parties’ websites. “You will learn so much from it,” he says.