The News - PESHAWAR: Relying on a few individuals and a particular region of the Frontier, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) central command has apparently bypassed some important figures and parts of the province over certain issues including renaming of the NWFP.
Once the stronghold of Pakistan Muslim League, the Nawaz League either lost its popularity or ignored local leadership in Lakki Marwat, DI Khan, Bannu, Kohat and Karak in the southern districts and Swat, Chitral in the north and some areas of Peshawar, Mardan and Swabi. But the two-time ruling party of the province has limited itself to Hazara division and a few personalities of that region where the PML-N had won only one provincial assembly seat in the 2002 general elections and five NWFP Assembly seats in the 2008 elections and even lost a National Assembly constituency in the recent Mansehra by-poll.
Former senator and provincial minister Anwar Kamal Marwat, who served the PML-N as general secretary for NWFP for eight years, Malik Nasir Khan from Bannu, former Karak district nazim Rehmat Salam Khattak, Javed Ibrahim Paracha from Kohat, Haji Kabir Khan from Lakki Marwat and others, have not deserted the PML-N but it seemed that the central command of the party ignored some of them in decision-making on important issues.
When contacted, Anwar Kamal Marwat told The News that Mian Nawaz Sharif should take a bold step if the renaming issue of the province is the only hurdle in the abolition of the 17th amendment.
“Our Quaid [Nawaz Sharif] did a favour to the people of our province when he constituted a special committee for the renaming issue but if the committee members could not decide a matter, then he should settle it down with the ANP,” he said.
Anwar Kamal declined to comment on the proposed hyphenated names like Hazara-Pakhtunkhwa, Abaseen-Afghania but said that being mainstream political party, the PML-N should consider the whole province and not a particular area while deciding on the issue.
The five-member committee of PML-N comprising Sardar Mehtab, Pir Sabir Shah, Saranjam Khan, Sartaj Aziz and Malik Nasir has reportedly proposed Hazara-Pakhtunkhwa; Abaseen-Afghania and Pakhtunkhwa-Abaseen as the possible new names for the NWFP.
Another PML-N leader, who requested not to be named, told this scribe that a few individuals having no political influence outside their native constituencies were dominating the party affairs in the province. He said that if a particular party was playing politics on the renaming issue, then why the PML-N should not cash this opportunity in its favour. The ANP and PML-N had remained important allies in past, he added.
It is worth recalling here that except the MMA government, the ANP had remained a major ally in the NWFP coalition governments since 1970. The Pakhtun nationalist party had formed governments with Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam and Pakistan People’s Party in 1988, with the PML-dominated Islami Jamhoori Ittehad (IJI) in 1990 and with Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz in 1993 and 1997. It is now the senior partner in the coalition government with the PPP. In 1993, the ANP supported the PML-N-affiliated chief minister Pir Sabir Shah in a no-confidence move. Due to the betrayal of some PML-N MPAs, however, Aftab Sherpao managed to oust Sabir Shah and form the government in the province.
The ANP quit the Sardar Mehtab-led government in NWFP when the PML-N deviated from its reported commitment to rename the province as Pakhtunkhwa, for which the provincial assembly had already passed a resolution.
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