Awami Muslim League

Sajjad Ahmad

July 20, 2008

Shaikh Rasheed Ahmad had announced his resignation from PML Q and announces his own party named “Awami Muslim League” in press conference today in Rawalpindi. He said that he is not looking the government playing a long inning and so he decided not to take part in the by elections.

Shaikh Rasheed, usually call himself a self made person, had faced the defeat in the last general elections and was quick to mark this defeat as the defeat to the party not to him! While taking his decision of retirement from politics back, he announced to make his own political party. He continuously and seriously hit hard on the political parties for not giving the way to the people like him to become a national leaders and thus trying to stop the way of those, who, he believes are the true and best representative of the people. Additionally, he also argued that his new party will change the political atmosphere of the country and will turn the current political system to its right direction.

Taking in view the saying of Shaikh Rasheed Ahmad, it is more acceptable and less illogical what he intend to say. Majority of the concerns raised by Shaikh Rasheed Ahmad are true. Such as middle class politicians are not allowed to come up in the list of leaders. As we all know that the majority of the leading politicians are bringing their sons and daughters to maintain their hold over politics and transferring the leaderships of their parties to the children, in the way that these are not the parties but the personal wealth of these leaders, which they are distributing to their children, before they get retired from the politics or died or get killed by each other. Benazir inherited the political property of her father and refused to give the legal share of this wealth to the rest of her brothers and sisters. As a result, there was never a good relationship between her and Murtaza Bhutto. And the assassination of Murtaza Bhutto, happened during her own rule, and was linked to Zardari, her husband. And she made sure that this wealth will be transferred to her son, even before her death. So the third generation of the Bhutto family the country will be facing in the next couple of decades.

Nawaz Shareef, following the same example and brought up his brother in politics. Now, he is also transferring his political wealth to his son and son-in-law. I can only hope that he will not get killed by the country’s enemies, in the same way, as they killed Benazir.

There are many other examples available in our country. Mr. Gohar Ayub is the son of Late Field Marshall Ayub Khan. Mr. Ijaz Ul Haq is the son of Late General Zia Ul Haq. Daultana Family, Makhdooms from Sindh and Chaudhuries from Punjab are also the examples of this.

Keeping these facts in mind. I will love to say “best of luck” to Shaikh Rasheed Ahmad. But, ah my bad luck and the bad luck of 16 crore (160 Million) Pakistanis that he did the same in the last elections, where he arranged a ticket for his brother in the general elections. Thank God, unfortunately, that he is not married. Otherwise, we would have to vote for his sons and daughters too, in the future.

But still there is a good chance available to his newly announced political party, Awami Muslim League. As he said this party would consist of self-made politicians like him and will allow new comers to show their political strength to the nation and their way will not be blocked by himself or anyone else. If that happens, that will be a big change in the politics without any doubt and I would be the first one, who will give him the credit of this change. But I think, this will not be enough. The political parties should be helped to get independence from the family politics and this can only be done by condemning those family politicians, at all forums available. Democracy must be introduced in political parties before they are allowed to take part in the democratic process of the country.

Back to Shaikh Rasheed Ahmad and his newly announced party, Awami Muslim League. It is clear from its name that he has strong belief that it is only Quaid-e Azam’s Muslim League, which will never be wiped out of the minds of the Pakistani people. It is clearly not a division of any existing Muslim League. But a creation of a new Muslim League. The intentions are clear that the words could be used to get popularity in the nation with the help of historical importance of these two words.

His decision of not taking part in elections is not surprising. The fact is that he was waiting to see, who are the candidates of other parties. So he could make a decision. At Aitazaz’s announcement that he is withdrawing his nomination papers, Shaikh Rasheed received a first blow to his new party. His praising words for Aitazaz was a little attempt to bring him up in the elections. The fact is that Shaikh Rasheed Ahmad was treating him as an easy target. Getting a ticket from the PPP and getting attention and priority over so called independent electronic and print media does not necessarily means that Aitazaz has become popular and will be winning the seat. In the past many such examples have been witnessed by the people; where the popular non-political figures had announced to jump in the politics, hoping that their popularity amongst people will help them in winning the seat in NA. But people had simply rejected them. Imran Khan is one of the most recent examples of this. Aitazaz was intelligent enough and timely figured out that contesting in the by elections will not only harm his struggle to get the old judiciary restored, but also it is less likely that he will be winning the elections. And in case, if he gets rejected in the elections, held under the supervision of his own party! He would have to acknowledge his defeat and will not be able to blame the government and Election Commission. In turn this defeat will de-moralise his movement members further and their position will be weaken further

These concerns forced him to withdraw from the elections. And his decision, not to take part in the by elections, also forced Shaikh Rasheed Ahmad not to take part in the by elections. This is because of many reasons. First of all, Aitazaz was not local residing person in NA 55. And he also not popular in this constituency. Shaikh Rasheed was already running a campaign against him and Nawaz Sharif and he even installed banners all over the city that Rawalpindi is not that bad that it can not even produce at least one person, who can represent them in the NA. Additionally, he must also have many other tricks up his sleeve against these prospective candidates.

In the end, I can only hope that this new addition in the list of political parties, will not be taken over by the powerful Americans and will not become just a pressure group. Thus directly or indirectly helping the hidden hands to force the current government of any time, to accept their dictation or get ready to fall.