Sajjad Ahmad

Date: 01 June 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 to the political parties for not giving the way to the people like him to become a national leader 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 big leaders. As we all know that the majority of the big 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 others. Benezir had itself received the political property of her father and denied to give legal share of this wealth to the rest of her brothers and sisters. In result, there was never a good relationship between her and Murtaza Bhutto. And the assassination of Murtaza Bhutto, happened during her own rule, 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, as they killed Benezir.

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. Doltana 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 corer Pakistanis that he did the same in the last elections, where he arranged a ticket for his brother in the general elections. Thanks God, unfortunately, that he is not declared 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 if that happens, I would be the first, who will give him the credit of this change. But I think, this will not be enough. The parties should be helped get independence from the family politics and this can only be done by condemning those family politicians at all forums available. The democracy should be introduced to these parties before they would have been allowed to take part in the democratic process of the country.

Back to Shaikh Rasheed Ahmad and his newly announce party, Awami Muslim League. It is clear from its name that he has strong believe that it is only Quid e Azam's Muslim League, which will never wipe out of the minds of the Pakistani people. It is clearly not a division of any existing Muslim League. But a population of 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 will the candidate of the other parties. So he can take 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 ticket from the PPP and getting attention and priority over so called independent electronic and print media does not necessarily means that Aitazaz become popular and will be winning the seat. In the past many examples had been setted up 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 and badly 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 get rejected in the elections, held under the supervision of his own party! he must have to acknowledge his defeat and will not be able to chant over 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 force 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 Shareef and 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 had developed many other tactics against these expected candidates.