EDITORIAL: Now that he has quit the chief ministership of country’s largest province, Punjab, where do we fit Usman Buzdar in the country’s political history? Was he a great administrator? Did he succeed in building his own power bloc within his party? Has he made money or nurtured family fiefdom? None of it; we only know him as Imran Khan’s ‘Wasim Akram Plus’, who played the game as laid out by his Kaptaan. But that was yesterday. He was bowled over by none but his own captain.
And as he left the pitch he did not look back, nor did he put on the face of a person who was betrayed by none but his own defender. Expectedly, he will return to his village tucked in the rugged mountain straddling provinces of Punjab and Balochistan. He will be the yesterday man, left with nothing but a clutch of secrets and stories that he may put to the pen. Usman Buzdar says he is thinking of writing a book titled ‘Journey from Mount Soloman to 8 Club Road’.
His journey to the chief minister’s office on Club Road in Lahore, how it all happened and why he was asked to pack up and leave would certainly be a great story. After doing his masters in political science and an LLB he joined the legal profession. He was elected to the Punjab Assembly following the 2018 general election and was chosen for the post of chief minister of Punjab by Prime Minister Khan because he had come from one of country’s most backward regions. His appointment as chief minister was unacceptable to the elite group of elected PTI members from Punjab. Usman Buzdar who often awarded the epithet “Imran Khan’s proxy”.
He was, therefore, known as a chief minister who would sign the dotted lines drawn by his boss in Islamabad obligingly. Therefore, even the best moves made by the elite group failed to dislodge him from the position as the country’s most prominent provincial chief executive. But there is an end to everything, so it was in case of Usman Buzdar.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2022
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