There is never a dull moment in Pakistani politics with so many politicians busy in trying to score points and in the process keeping the public involved and also entertained.

The media in turn ensures that their every move and statement, even if it is hollow and repetitive, is given out of proportion coverage in the newspapers and on the radio and television. The "statement journalism" continues to occupy disproportionately large space in the media at the expense of coverage of issues affecting the lives of the people.

Many recent headlines concerned the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), once the trendsetter of ideas and a major player in the country’s politics but now reduced to a shadow of its past glory. The PPP’s plight was evident from the defections from its ranks, particularly in Pakistan’s most populous province Punjab where the voters are so numerous that they get to decide which party will rule the country.

Witnessing the departure of party stalwarts like former minister of state Samsam Bokhari, Arif Khan Lashari and long-time loyalist Ashraf Sohna, who remained a Punjab Assembly member, one knew they have lost hope of the PPP coming into power in the province again and were therefore aligning with the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI). Their defection dealt a severe blow to the PPP in their native Okara district and one of the obvious reasons to say goodbye was the person of the local strongman Mian Manzoor Wattoo, the party’s central Punjab president and a former chief minister unpopular among the party cadres because he isn’t the typical, ideologically-driven PPP man.

With more defections likely in Punjab, the PPP is destined to lose further ground to both the PTI and the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N). Asif Ali Zardari and his son Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, the PPP co-chairman and chairman, respectively, have been saying that they intend to stay put in Punjab to revive and strengthen the party in the province, but they have yet to move beyond rhetoric toward this end. To stay out of harm’s way, the elder Zardari has gone abroad while the younger Zardari prefers to stay in Sindh.

The palatial Bilawal House in Lahore is waiting for a regular occupant whether it is the senior or junior Zardari because the dynasty-based PPP is largely unable to function in the absence of the father-son duo.

However, the PPP has been able to stay intact and prevent any noticeable defections from its ranks in the three smaller provinces. Being the ruling party in Sindh, the PPP has the authority and resources to keep its leaders and activists happy. The party’s real test would be its ability to cope with challenges once it is no longer in power in Sindh. This may not happen in the foreseeable future because the PPP still has no real challengers in its strongholds of rural Sindh while urban Sindh is the domain of the Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM).

The PPP’s most recent problems resulting from allegations of corruption and misrule following arrests of senior bureaucrats considered close to the party leadership aren’t over yet, but Chief Minister Qaim Ali Khan was clearly seen attempting to bail out his party by conditionally agreeing to extend the mandate of the Rangers for carrying out operations against militants and criminals in Karachi for one month only. The PPP knows it has to work overtime to appease the powers that be to dilute the negative fallout of former President Asif Ali Zardari’s recent outburst against the security establishment.

The PPP is largely leaderless in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and rudderless in Balochistan. There are groupings galore in the party in KP and also frequent disagreements, the latest resulting from the decision to join the ANP and JUI-F in an unnatural trilateral alliance against the PTI. The PPP Balochistan president, Sadiq Umrani, lives in Karachi and is unable to shape the party into a disciplined unit. The PPP in Gilgit-Baltistan recently suffered its worst electoral defeat after five years of its misrule and the party looks like a sinking ship in Azad Kashmir despite being in power due to division in its ranks.

The PPP’s losses have been PTI’s gains, particularly in Punjab, but except Karachi the latter has been unable to make inroads in Sindh or make its presence felt in Balochistan. There is no doubt the PTI is becoming stronger and attracting disaffected and opportunist politicians in Punjab, but the incumbency factor has affected its popularity in KP as was evident from the recent local government elections in which the ANP and JUI-F made a slight comeback.

To his credit though, the PTI founder Imran Khan offered to hold re-elections in KP in case an agreement was reached with the opposition parties, which are agitating against mismanagement and rigging in the local bodies’ polls and demanding resignation of the PTI-led coalition government.

However, the PTI may not get what it wanted to achieve when it pushed its demand for establishment of the judicial commission to probe alleged rigging in the May 2013 general election. Imran Khan’s charges of organised rigging in favour of the PML-N in the polls have been hard to prove, though mismanagement was common primarily due to the shortcomings of the Election Commission. It is unlikely that the three-member commission head by the Supreme Court Chief Justice Nasirul Mulk would scrap the 2013 general election and send Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif government packing home.

This would frustrate Imran Khan, who invested so much time and resources into his politics of agitation and put his party and its lawmakers on trial in a bid to oust Nawaz Sharif from power and force fresh polls. The way he levelled charges against anyone blocking his way and questioning his claims inflicted damage to his cause. Though the PTI is still a force to reckon with and most of the young people who believe in him continue to follow him, the party would have fared much better had it practiced positive politics.

The jury is still out on the PTI government’s performance in KP, though it needs to be acknowledged that the party is trying to implement its manifesto to fight corruption, improve governance and transfer power to the elected local government institutions by allocating them 30 per cent of the budget.

The PML-N as usual has focused attention on Punjab, its stronghold for years, with the elder brother Nawaz Sharif extending a helping hand to Shahbaz Sharif to accomplish ambitious development goals and at times ignoring the pressing and genuine needs of the smaller provinces.

The prime minister has also curbed any ambition that he may have had to control the security establishment or run an independent foreign policy. After having suffered in the past at the hands of powerful generals, he is learning to have a friction-less relationship with the Army chief General Raheel Sharif. He has high stakes in letting the existing democratic system to work after having survived the scare last year when the agitating PTI together with Tahirul Qadri’s Pakistan Awami Tehrik had reached the gates of the Prime Minister House in Islamabad and threatened to overthrow him.

The worst is over for him with incident of terrorism on the decline and relations with Afghanistan improving, but the energy crisis continues to pose challenge to his government. Unless the judicial commission gives an unlikely decision against the PML-N government, the prime minister for now seems settled in his job.