Farzana Mushtaq Ghani, Pakistan Muslim League-Q MNA from Abbottabad has vowed to resist renaming of NWFP till last drop of blood, accusing the ANP-led government of creating unrest in the province for their own vested interests.
Talking to Business Recorder exclusively here on Sunday, the MNA, who also walked out from National Assembly, when President Zardari took the stage to deliver his presidential address last week, said that instead of focusing to resolve the real issues confronted by the masses, the ANP government is bent upon pushing the province towards stone stage.
Farzana said that official documentation to rename NWFP as Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa would cost the government over Rs10 billions. The stationery, she added, already printed and lying in printing press and official departments including the Governor House, Chief Minister's House and the offices of the corps commander, chief secretary and the home minister office would now be wasted.
She said that that all this stationery, which cost over Rs10 billion, would be junked after the distribution of new stationery in official departments as work on rewriting the province name on official documents.
Farzana called upon both the federal and provincial government to address the core issues of militancy, lawlessness, unemployment and poverty on priority basis instead of wasting its energy on renaming the province.
Our forefathers had rendered countless sacrifices for creation of this country and that the ANP's move might destabilise the country, she said, adding that a meagre percentage of the NWFP people are in favour of renaming the province. The people, who favour renaming the province, should respect the referendum of the pre-partition era and accept it as NWFP, she maintained.
"Don't repeat the history as people of the province have not forgotten the only party (ANP) which for one reason or the other sided with Congress in the struggle for demanding an independent homeland for Muslims," she maintained.
She said that Khyber-Pukhtoonkhwa is not acceptable to non-Pashtoon population, saying that there is a danger of the name dividing the people of NWFP.
This is pertinent to mention that NWFP is not only Mardan, Swabi and Charsada - stronghold of the ANP, but also Kohat, Hangu, Tal, DI Khan, Bannu, FATA comprising of seven large agencies with very independent and strong tribal traditions, Haripur, Hazara, Abbottabad, Mansehra, Kohistan, Dir, Bajaur, Buneir, Swat, and Chitral who have neither much love for the name nor for the ANP itself.
Not all of them come from a Pashtoon dominated or Pashto speaking area but have also a distinct different tinge and tone of culture, language or dialect of their own. The demand to give NWFP a name was initially raised by Bacha Khan, known as Frontier Gandhi, in the first legislative assembly of Pakistan. He had suggested Pakhtoonistan but the name did not see the light of day.
In the Zia-ul-Haq regime, which accepted the need to give the province a name instead of its geographical identity that was seen as a colonial hand-me-down -Pakhtunkhwa emerged as a viable alternative as Pukhtunistan was resented by the non-pashtoon population of the province.