Delawar
Jan
PESHAWAR:
From his looks, one
might underrate him. He wears the traditional white cap that slides onto his
forehead nearly touching the eyebrows. His unstarched waistcoat fits loose in
his skinny body.
One
of the residents of the far-off ‘black mountain,’ he has hardly learned
strutting around, unlike his other colleagues. Simple and humble are the words
to describe him in a nutshell. But when it
comes to effort or competence and political know-how, he does not lag behind.
In fact, he is a champion.
Zareen Gul is the best
lawmaker of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly, the previous parliamentary year
records suggest. He brought the most non-legislative business to the provincial
assembly and gave tough time to the government. With being vocal, he comes prepared;
a combination that at times embarrasses the government.
Inside a poky room of
MPA hostel, he explains what made him a distinguished lawmaker in the assembly.
“I work hard on
preparing questions for the assembly,” Zareen Gul said, who brought 38
non-legislative activities, 35 filed queries about departments’ performance and
three resolutions. The MPA said he visited different departments to learn what
was happening wrong. He usually obtained some help from them to understand the
issue before bringing it before the House in shape of a question.
A
day before every sitting, he checks whether his question has come on the
agenda. “If a question is on the agenda, I burn the mid-night oil to carefully
read it to ensure that the answer furnished is not wrong or manipulated,” he
said, seesawing between squatting and fidgeting on one end of a bolster. “Most
of the treasury benches members are not happy with me for detecting wrong
answers or misleading details,” he said, adding that some officers in the bureaucracy
were also upset at his grilling of the departments.
Zareen
Gul was elected on Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-F ticket from Torghar, an
underdeveloped district in Hazara Division. “It’s ‘Kala Dhaka’ in Urdu and ‘Black
Mountain’ in English,” he said, hurrying up to add that it was called ‘Tor’
‘Kala’ or ‘black’ because of its forested mountains.
What
he calls a ‘cell’ is a team membered by his young son and nephew that provides
technical support to the MPA. “My nephew Muhammad Ali Jan is a historian and my
son Shakir Zareen is my political heir,” he said, when asked whether he gets
technical assistance from someone. “After they have done their work, which
includes pinpointing wrongdoings in departments, I prepare the questions in a
professional manner,” said Zareen Gul, who holds a bachelor’s degree in political science and philosophy
and who is a seasoned lawmaker elected five times to the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
Assembly in his patchy political career.
He was first elected to
the provincial assembly in1985 as an independent candidate and still remembers
a curt message from the then governor Gen (R) Fazle Haq that the military, not
anybody else, would continue to run the government.
Before 1990 election,
he joined Awami National Party and won consecutively three times in 1990, 1993 and
1997. He contested the 2013 election on JUI-F ticket and again made it to the
assembly. However, his two attempts for National Assembly made in 1988 and
2002, both as an independent candidate, failed.
It’s
frustrating for him that he has always remained in the opposition and could not
do much for the development of Torghar.
He
works hard to bring business to the assembly but does it pay off? To a certain
level, Zareen Gul says. “The government machinery gets alerted and local
administration swings into action to resolve a particular problem,” he said,
but linked resolution of such problems to presence of the administrative
secretaries in the assembly. “Real power is with the secretaries. These
ministers and advisors are nothing, useless,” he said in desperation.
Zareen
Gul is terribly disappointed with the ministers. “They come unprepared to the
assembly,” he said, referring to their inability to answer questions in the
House, often embarrassing themselves. “I am not satisfied with their level of
intellect,” he put it bluntly and said they must be trained in the use of parliamentary
language.
Nevertheless,
Zareen Gul admires Chief Minister Pervez Khattak as good, uncorrupted and
senior politician and the one who is unaccustomed to official protocol. But he
sees no reason to conclude that his government even exists in the province.
“It’s the worst example of bad governance when you fail to utilise the budget.
It means the people did not benefit,” he argued.
Born
in December 1952, Zareen Gul still has black hairs in his trimmed beard that border his sunken cheeks. He
is super fit. Believe it or not, he says he has never caught any serious
illness in his life. Not even a headache. What’s the secret of his health? His
conclusion says less eating. “I hardly eat a roti in a whole day meals,” the MPA, literally scrawny, said,
taking small morsels from a plate.
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