Apart from his posts as chief executive for the Kashmir Affairs and Northern Areas Ministry and governor of Punjab, he was also Pakistan’s interior minister from 1951 till 1954. During the PPP government of the 1970s, Muzaffargarh was represented by Ghulam Mustafa Khar who served as chief minister and Punjab governor. Meanwhile, Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan also made Muzaffargarh proud — through his opposition politics.

Since parliamentary politics resumed in 1988, after the long hiatus that was Gen Zia’s dictatorship, the politics of Muzaffargarh’s four tehsils has been dominated by the Khars, the Nawab family, the Hinjras, the Dastis, the Qureshis, the Jatois and the Gopangs. There are five National Assembly and 11 provincial assembly seats from Muzaffargarh.

In the 2008 elections, all NA and six PA seats were won by the PPP that included personalities that shot to prominence including Hina Rabbani Khar and Jamshed Dasti. – Photos/captions by Reuters, text by Tehseen Raza Malik/Dawn Newspaper

Jamshed Dasti. — File Photo.

Courtroom, newsroom, drawing room — everyone loves to hate him. And that’s what the angry Jamshed Dasti is looking for. Mr Dasti finds it hard to convince everyone that he survived on his MNA’s salary. His opponents point to the big office he maintains in Muzaffargarh and the 30-odd cases against him for crimes ranging from extortion to murder. He denies these allegations and is now contesting in Muzaffargarh after an election tribunal overturned his conviction in a fake degree case.

The son of an amateur wrestler and the owner of a still modest house, Mr Dasti first came into the limelight back in the late 1990s. His identity was Shahwani, a Muzaffargarh one-man weekly where he worked as the editor-cum-hawker. By the 2000 local government polls, he had cultivated his links sufficiently to be elected a nazim on a seat reserved for farmers. Mr Dasti immediately hit out at the district nazim, the Musharraf-backed Sultan Hinjra.

A vivid memory of that period is a procession taken out against Mr Hinjra, with Mr Dasti at its head, of donkey carts. It was during those days that he earned himself the nickname of ‘One-Five’ — the people of Muzaffargarh used to say he was always just one call away.

In the 2005 local government polls, he tried his luck on a general union council nazim seat, and won. The PPP’s Qayyum Jatoi, who was the district nazim, took him under his wing and groomed him politically to such an extent that he beat Mustafa Khar and his brother in the race for a PPP ticket for NA-178 in the 2008 elections.

The PPP claimed all five National Assembly seats in the district. Mr Dasti beat the Nawabzada duo, Mansoor Khan and Iftikhar Khan, from a constituency not unknown for electing minnows. The party rewarded him with the office of the chairperson of the National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Sports.

Although a treasury member, Mr Dasti had to look for a new Hinjra to vent his by now dreaded spleen on, and stay in the media’s spotlight. He found one in everybody’s favourite punching bag, the chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board, Ijaz Butt. During his three years as the standing committee chairman he grabbed headlines with hard-hitting statements against Mr Butt, riding the wave of popular sentiment against corruption in the country’s cricketing ranks. Another constant target of Mr One-Five’s ire was Dr Asim Hussain, given general anger against frequent hikes in petrol prices.

Mr Dasti’s innovative Benazir Bhutto Shaheed Free Bus Service in his constituency was the most talked about such initiative in Punjab politics before Shahbaz Sharif’s more elaborate Metro Bus Service. Again, like the expenses for running his spacious office and the money for the bus service were claimed to have come from supporters.

Whatever situation he found himself in, Mr Dasti would somehow manage to paint it as a landmark in his fight against the well-entrenched. Thus, the highlights of his career include a brawl with Faisal Saleh Hayat in the National Assembly. Consequently, Mr Dasti the parliamentarian was barred by the speaker from taking part in the assembly proceedings for three days, but Mr Dasti the politician who had perfected his style on the dust-laden roads of Muzaffargarh was visibly boosted.

This closeness to the soil won him the by-election he was forced to contest after his disqualification by the court over a fake degree. After his second coming, though, Mr Dasti appeared to be an increasingly frustrated soul. His eventual exit from the PPP was preceded by a phase where he acted as the champion for the deprived by going after Hina Rabbani Khar, a fellow PPP MNA from Muzaffargarh with feudal roots. He now intends to have an independent panel for the election in his home town. In the true tradition of shifting loyalties, he is a man up for grabs.

Jamshed Dasti’s mother holds his picture during an interview. -Photo by Reuters

MUZAFFARGARH: With a flick of the reins, Jamshed Dasti launched his run for Pakistan’s parliament from the back of a donkey cart, cantering through the rutted streets of his home town to file his nomination papers as supporters erupted into cheers.

With the opening act in his campaign unfolding exactly as planned, Dasti beamed the beatific smile of a man who might look like an underdog, but who is sure he has the momentum to humble his wealthy rivals at next month’s general elections.

His choice of transport was no accident: Dasti wants to persuade poor voters that Muzaffargarh, a farming district in Punjab province long ruled by a Pajero-driving, land-owning aristocracy, is about to change forever.

For his biggest rivals are none other than the Khar dynasty, which has wielded huge influence in the district for decades, and whose most famous heiress, Hina Rabbani Khar, was foreign minister until last month.

“Because of me, people have realized they can have a better life,” Dasti told Reuters.

“Their poor neighbor is now running for elections against the lords of a vast kingdom. How can this not give them hope?”

The son of an illiterate laborer and part-time wrestler, Dasti is a rare example of how a man of modest means can mount a credible challenge to a patronage system prevalent in Punjab where the landed elite can perpetuate their grip on power by intimidating tenants or buying votes with bribes.

His campaign feeds a broader hope that the May elections – against a backdrop of Taliban attacks, record sectarian unrest, chronic power cuts and a near-failed economy – can boost Pakistan’s fraught experiment with democracy by proving that voters in at least some areas have a chance to elect somebody not much different to themselves.

Unlike some would-be giant-killers who have little hope at the polls, which will mark Pakistan’s first transition between civilian-led governments, Dasti is no rank outsider.

After years working as a community volunteer, he was elected to the local council before winning a seat in the National Assembly at the last elections in 2008 on a ticket for President Asif Ali Zardari’s Pakistan People’s Party.

This time, as an independent, he will run for his own constituency and a neighboring constituency that places him on a collision course with Ghulam Rabbani Khar, a prominent land owner and Hina Rabbani Khar’s father.

While the Khars may have a fight on their hands, Hina Rabbani Khar believes Dasti’s philanthropy is overblown.

“People call him Robin Hood but things really aren’t that simple,” Khar said with a wry smile at her family estate in the region of rippling wheat fields and cotton plantations.

Khar’s signature style – silk blouse, pearls, chiffon head scarf perfectly in place – cuts a stark contrast to Dasti’s visibly unironed clothes and sandals.

Dasti appeared to relish his role as an underdog this month when he spent a week in jail over allegations he had submitted a fake degree certificate in his nomination papers. The charges were later withdrawn.

“When I was growing up and began to understand how the system worked, I promised that as surely as I had drunk my mother’s milk, I would beat this system,” Dasti told Reuters in the superintendent’s office at the jail in the nearby city of Multan, before being led back to his cell.

But the disillusionment with land owners in Muzaffargarh notwithstanding, Khar is herself admired in Pakistan for breaking the patriarchal mould of many landed families who would never contemplate allowing a daughter her advanced education or to play such a public role on the global stage.

LAWMAKER AND BUS DRIVER

With the majority of Pakistan’s electorate living in the countryside, the outcome of the polls in Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous province and its political heartland, will undoubtedly be shaped by big, land-owning families.

But Dasti’s popularity suggests that the dynamic may be in flux as Pakistan becomes accustomed to holding regular elections and the military, which has interrupted politics in the past, remains in its barracks.

As a student, Dasti, who enjoys reciting poetry inspired by the Marxist philosophy of class struggle, published a weekly newsletter, garnishing its smudged pages with editorials against feudalism. He went door to door collecting donations and started Muzaffargarh’s first free ambulance service. People nicknamed him “Mr 15″ – after the police emergency telephone number.

Even when he won a National Assembly seat, he continued to work one 15-hour shift a week as an unpaid driver for a free bus service he started.

“He comes to the stop at six in the morning and sits down with the drivers for breakfast,” said Mohammad Sharif, a barber. “Have you seen anything like this: a member of the National Assembly who drives a bus?”

When Pakistan was ravaged by floods in 2010, Dasti cemented his popularity by accusing land owners of using their influence over irrigation officials to divert the water to spare their land and submerge peasant plots.

His campaign strikes a particular chord in a country where the average legislator has assets of $800,000, but where almost 70 per cent of them did not file tax returns last year, according the Center for Investigative Reporting in Pakistan.

Dasti too is shadowed by controversy. Critics say he appears to have become wealthier since winning the National Assembly seat and question how he pays for the fuel that runs his buses. But he is judged by most for his work in the community.

“You can call Dasti at 1 am and he will get on a motor bike to help you,” said Mohammad Nawaz Gul, a vegetable seller. “I’ve never even seen Hina’s face.”

So confident is Dasti of victory that he left the PPP in March to run as an independent, reluctant to remain in a party in which his rivals – the Khars – are such prominent stalwarts.

Hina Rabbani Khar’s imposing house lies at the end of a tree-lined approach road through the family’s 1,500-acre estate. On the manicured lawns, Khar’s nieces and nephews joined a cricket game with village children while her two daughters played with pet rabbits as waiters hovered.

Khar said her family had made a big contribution to the area by building a free school for girls, introducing more efficient farming techniques and treating workers on its farms fairly.

“Dasti couldn’t appear big until he created an enemy,” Khar said. “We don’t have serfs working for us. We are professional farmers and educated people.”

Khar said Muzaffargarh could no longer be described in terms of peasants’ servitude to land owners who control vote banks.

“Because of the media and the practice of democracy, people’s lives and awareness have changed in the last decade. Anyone who tells you people are being treated like slaves and intimidated for votes is lying.”

But Dasti insists that pent-up frustration over the gulf between the haves and have-nots will ride him to victory in May.

Lying at the end of a narrow lane, the small family home where he lives with his mother symbolizes his everyman appeal.

“The door of this little house is always open,” Dasti’s sister, Hafeez Bibi, said. “We are not like those who wash their hands after touching a poor farmer.”

Jamshed Dasti’s conviction was overturned by an election tribunal. His appeal against his disqualification will be taken up on April 15. — File Photo

Muzaffargarh may be backward in terms of development but has dominated Punjab politics since the 1950s. Nawab Mushtaq Gurmani introduced Muzaffargarh to national politics when he signed the Karachi Agreement of 1949 that established the ceasefire line (Line of Control) dividing the Kashmir region.

Apart from his posts as chief executive for the Kashmir Affairs and Northern Areas Ministry and governor of Punjab, he was also Pakistan’s interior minister from 1951 till 1954. During the PPP government of the 1970s, Muzaffargarh was represented by Ghulam Mustafa Khar who served as chief minister and Punjab governor. Meanwhile, Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan also made Muzaffargarh proud — through his opposition politics.

Since parliamentary politics resumed in 1988, after the long hiatus that was Gen Zia’s dictatorship, the politics of Muzaffargarh’s four tehsils has been dominated by the Khars, the Nawab family, the Hinjras, the Dastis, the Qureshis, the Jatois and the Gopangs. There are five National Assembly and 11 provincial assembly seats from Muzaffargarh.

In the 2008 elections, all NA and six PA seats were won by the PPP that included personalities that shot to prominence including Hina Rabbani Khar and Jamshed Dasti.

The 2002 elections introduced several new faces because of the degree bar. Muzaffargarh was represented by three women at the national level and three men: Khalida Mohsin Qureshi (PPP NA-176), Hina Rabbani Khar (PML-Q NA-177), Tehmina Dasti (PML-Q reserved seat). NA-178 was won by PML-Q’s Shahid Jameel Qureshi and NA-179 by Syed Basit Sultan of the same party. The PPP’s Qayyum Jatoi won NA-180.

Elections officers say that in Muzaffargarh district there are 1,660,926 registered votes.

This time, NA-176 will see Dr Shabbir Qureshi as the PPP candidate since his father Mohsin Qureshi has been in a coma since 2009. The PML-N will field either Sultan Hinjra or Arshad Qureshi. The candidate left by the PML-N is likely to be the PTI candidate.

Another aspirant is Malik Ghulam Mustafa Khar, who is now a Pakistan Muslim League-Functional candidate. He is attempting to be a joint candidate of the PML-N and PML-F as his long absence from the constituency, which he won in previous elections, indicates dismal chances of victory. On the other hand, the PML-N is also frustrating his effort for seat adjustment. The PML-N reportedly offered him NA-177 where it has no potential candidate, but the senior Khar refused to face his younger brother PPP candidate Noor Rabbani Khar.

In NA-177, Hina Rabbani Khar’s father Noor Rabbani Khar is the PPP candidate while the PML-N has chosen Khalid Gurmani, two-time runner-up to Hina Rabbani Khar in 2002 and 2008. Meanwhile, a former tehsil nazim Rafiq Khar has revolted against the PML-N and has decided to contest elections as an independent candidate. Jamshed Dasti who has left the PPP is also an independent candidate for this seat. He was recently sentenced to a three-year jail term and told to pay a fine of Rs5,000 by the Muzaffargarh district and sessions court for holding a fake degree. Later, his conviction was overturned by an election tribunal. His appeal against his disqualification will be taken up on April 15. Noor Rabbani Khar has decided that his daughter Hina will not run after Jamshed Dasti allegedly used abusive language against her.

The NA-178 seat is unpredictable. Formerly a staunch PML-N leader and the son of Nawabzada Nasrullah, Nawabzada Iftikhar is now a PPP ticket holder after being rejected by the PML-N. Earlier, Sajid Naeem Qureshi, the brother of former state minister Shahid Jameel Qureshi, was a PPP candidate for this seat.

Here too, Jamshed Dasti is contesting polls as an independent candidate while the PML-N’s choice is Sardar Ebad Dogar, a former Sipah-i-Sahaba leader whose claim to fame lies in his announcement of Rs10 million head money on the late governor Salmaan Taseer for voicing support for blasphemy convict Asia Masih.

For NA-179 and 180, Moazzam and Qayyum Jatoi will be PPP candidates while the PML-N’s choices are Haroon Sultan Bukhari and Abdullah Bukhari.

While former PML-Q MNA Ashiq Gopang says he has not left the PML-Q he is nevertheless contesting elections as an independent candidate. Here another setback is awaiting the PML-N as the Bukharis are dogged by dual nationality charges and have been summoned by the ECP. Having seen defection from its ranks, the PML-N might have learnt a lesson: never to gather all foes under one umbrella on political promises.

The PTI is also a factor in Muzaffargarh politics. Among its potential candidates is Nawab Mansoor Khan, the eldest son of Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan and former Punjab revenue minister. He is running for NA-179 while for NA-180 there is another former MNA, Jameel Bukhari.

Former foreign minister Hina Rabbani Khar. — Photo by AP/File

MUZAFFARGARH: The Returning Officer on Saturday asked former foreign minister Hina Rabbani Khar to produce her marriage certificate during the scrutiny of her nomination papers in Kot Addu for the NA-177 seat.

Returning Officer Abdur Rehman Bodla asked Khar to produce her ‘nikahnama’ while examining her nomination papers in which the former minister had declared that her husband Feroz Gulzar had liabilities of Rs 35 million.

Khar has agreed to provide the said document. However, bizarre questioning by ROs during the scrutiny of nomination papers throughout the country has come under severe criticism.

Khar is contesting for a National Assembly seat in Kot Addu on a Pakistan Peoples Party ticket. On Saturday, she appeared before the RO for a hearing regarding objections on her nomination. After a brief hearing, the RO reserved his decision which will be announced on Sunday, the last date of nomination papers’ scrutiny.

This follows the Election Commission of Pakistan’s directive to the ROs to refrain from ‘irrelevant’ quizzing of candidates.

The nature of questions being asked by returning officers has attracted severe criticism from media, rights activists and political parties.

Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar. — Photo by Reuters/File

ISLAMABAD: Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar on Tuesday said the issue of drone attacks would be taken up with US Ambassador to Pakistan Richard Olson, DawnNews reported.

During a policy statement in the Senate, Khar said drone attacks were a violation of Pakistan’s territorial integrity, adding that the government was not oblivious to the challenges confronting the country.

Khar’s statement on US drones came in the wake of the Obama administration’s finalising of a rule book for targeted killings which would not apply to Pakistan, enabling the CIA to freely conduct direct drone strikes in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata).

She moreover said Pakistan wanted cordial ties with all neighbouring states, including India, adding that Pakistan’s foreign minister and army chief would not be issuing irresponsible statements as had been made by their Indian counterparts.

The minister said the government did not believe in issuing irresponsible or provocative statements for the purpose of posturing.

Earlier last week, Pakistan’s High Commissioner to India Salman Bashir had urged India to tone down what he called “Pakistan bashing” over a spate of military clashes in Kashmir between the neighbours.

Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar. – Photo by Reuters/File

NEW YORK: Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar late Tuesday said that whoever calls the Haqqani network “an asset for Pakistan” did not represent the Pakistani government, a report from BBC Urdu said.

She further said that army chief General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani did not hold such opinions in the present circumstances.

The foreign minister was addressing a discussion titled “Pakistan’s Democratic Journey” held by Asia Society, a renowned think-tank, in New York on Tuesday evening. The discussion was moderated by a political columnist of Time, a weekly magazine in the United States.

The moderator asked Khar about an interview given by General Kayani to the New York Times four years ago in which he allegedly stated that he considered the Haqqani network an “asset” for Pakistan.

In response, Khar she did not know who had said it, adding that whoever calls the Haqqani network an asset to Pakistan could not be a representative of the Pakistani government.

She further said that General Kayani no longer held that opinion.

Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar. — File photo

ISLAMABAD: Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar on Thursday said she hoped that the incidents reported on the line of control (LoC) would not affect the dialogue that has been underway between India and Pakistan, DawnNews reported.

Khar claimed there were contradictions in the statements of Indian officials with regard to the incidents.

The foreign minister added that Pakistani media had played a positive role in the matter.

Earlier on Wednesday, Khar had appeared on India’s Times Now news channel and had issued a firm denial and criticised the statements by authorities in New Delhi about the alleged killing of two Indian soldiers in Kashmir.

India had accused Pakistan of sending troops across the heavily militarised LoC on Tuesday and had said two of its soldiers were killed and one was wounded in a half-hour gunfight.

The Pakistani army had later denied what it said were Indian allegations of “unprovoked firing” across the LoC.

The incident came two days after a clash along the LoC in which Pakistan said one of its soldiers had been killed after an Indian incursion. India had denied its troops crossed the line.

Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar.—Reuters Photo (File)

ISLAMABAD: Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar is likely to visit Riyadh on Jan 1 for consultations on the aggravating Syrian crisis amid stepped-up international efforts to end the conflict.

“The foreign minister will stop over in the Saudi capital on her way to New York,” a senior Pakistani official told Dawn.

Ms Khar is travelling to New York on the occasion of Pakistan assuming the United Nations Security Council’s rotational presidency.

Ms Khar was last week invited by her Saudi counterpart Prince Saud Al Faisal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud to visit Riyadh for urgent consultations.

Saudi Arabia, the official disclosed, is asking Pakistan to play a role during its UNSC presidency and persuade Russia and China to join a fresh western initiative on Syria. He did not disclose the specifics of the proposal being pushed by the West and Arab countries.

Russia has been diplomatically supporting the Assad regime and China has been blocking the UNSC resolutions for sanctions against Syria.

Pakistan has been maintaining an ambivalent position on the crisis. Unlike Tehran, Moscow and Beijing, Islamabad has never expressed its support for embattled President Assad, but has also stayed clear of endorsing the rebels.

“Regarding our policy on Syria, we are concerned about the security situation in the country and are also concerned about the killing of innocent people and hope that the issue will be resolved through peaceful means,” FO Spokesman Moazzam Khan said.

At the OIC foreign ministers’ meeting last month, Ms Khar had said that “democratic aspirations of the people of Syria can only be achieved in an enabling environment of peace”.

FO BRIEFING: At the weekly media briefing, the FO spokesman said that Pakistan, in principle, had no objection to hosting election observer missions to monitor the coming polls.

However, he said, it would be for the caretaker government and the Election Commission of Pakistan to formally invite the election observers.

The spokesman said the internal process for granting the Most Favoured Nation status to India was continuing. He did not say if Pakistan would be able to grant the MFN status to India by the promised date of Dec 31.

“Hopefully, these processes will be completed soon,” he said, adding that the government had already decided to grant this status to India.

Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar. -Reuters Photo

ISLAMABAD: Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar on Wednesday said terrorism, militancy and incidents of violence in Pakistan and Afghanistan are a threat for regional peace and is badly affecting economic conditions in both the countries.

Talking to private television channel, she said Pakistan wanted the United States to have a responsible exit plan from Afghanistan in order to keep regional peace and stability.

The foreign Minister said Pakistan’s role is to assist the Afghan government in achieving its objectives and responsible transition and exit of US is possible through process of reconciliation.

She said national reconciliation between Afghan Taliban and the country’s national government will be necessary for a peaceful and prosperous Afghanistan.

Replying to a question, she said peace talks between the Taliban and Afghan authorities in future should be held in Kabul and not on foreign soil.

She said intra-Afghan dialogue will be needed to maintain peace in Afghanistan.

The foreign minister said that Pakistan sees it role as a facilitator which helps Afghans to maintain their sovereignty and take decisions according to their own needs.

She also said the international community has a consensus that peace and stability should be maintained in Afghanistan.

Replying to another question, Hina Rabbani Khar said Pakistan wants to maintain good relations with all neighbouring countries including India.

She added Pakistan is enjoying cordial relations with Iran and the ties between the two countries will strengthen further in future.