I still vividly remember
entering into a polling station in my maternal hometown in 1988, where Malik
Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi, from Sindh, was competing against a home boy, Mian Tariq
Ahmed Gurmani. This National Assembly seat was left vacant by Malik Ghulam Mustafa
Khar, who had won two seats NA-137 & NA-138 and had chosen to retain NA-137
for himself. He was generous enough to request his dear old friend from Sindh,
who had lost his seat from his home town, to get him elected for the National
Assembly and ultimately, for the premiership of Pakistan. My grandfather, Mian
Ghulam Abbas Qureshi, was contesting initially, but he was asked to step aside
and facilitate in the election of Mr. Jatoi, since he was to become the Prime
Minister of Pakistan. Mr. Gurmani was not impressed enough and decided to make
a run for this seat on PP ticket.
By the way, I was only eight
years old at the time of these by-elections. I did not quite know behind-the-scene
politics of this particular seat, but I just wanted to be the part of this
exciting event. I had gathered these informations over the following years
through various sources like books and newspapers, etc. However, I did
participate in these elections by helping old family members and friends in casting
their votes. Today, when I recall these things, it gives me shivers in the
spinal cord to think of an eight year old in the polling station. I can’t
imagine any parent would let their child drift on a distant street to play with
their buddies, let alone spending a day in a polling station for the whole day.
Anyways, Mr. Jatoi won that by-election with a clear majority and left us for
good. I do remember that someone from this constituency once had located him in
Islamabad and asked for his help, as he was our representative. And he had
responded that he didn’t owe anything to the constituents. He had returned the
favor many times over to the individual who had vacated that particular seat.
So that was that.
Back in the days, our
assemblies were pretty fragile and our political environment unstable. So the
country was holding elections every couple of years. It was Peoples’ Party
government in 1990 which had been ousted and the elections had been announced in
1990. This time around for NA-138, Malik Ghulam Mustafa Khar was again running
and my grandfather was also in the race. The elections were very intense. The
elections for the National and Provincial Assemblies were held on separate days.
So the results of the National Assembly were undeniably influential for the
provincial assembly candidates. So the political parties made a hard run to
ensure grabbing the maximum National Assembly seats to win Provincial Assembly
contests. The final mandate was clearly given to Mr. Khar, as he had bagged some
53000 votes and my grandfather some 38000. It was a tough election for the
family. This time around Mr. Khar had retained NA-138 and vacated NA-137 for
his younger brother, Malik Noor Rabbani Khar, to contest and later win that
seat.
