Looking for a governor who can

Governor’s office highly politicised; can Jhagra bring reforms FATA so desperately needs?

PESHAWAR: “Yes, guvnor!” because there can be no “No governor”, not even 158 years after the British Raj dawned on the Subcontinent.

Much has changed since Ralph Griffith was made governor of the North West Frontier Province after the end of the Second Round Table Conference on December 1, 1931.

The “Pathan land” was raised to the status of the governor’s province, but not without the struggle of native political forces which have long lived in the towering shadow of written history.

No longer do we have boys who grew up in Middlesex, England, hoping to land dream jobs in the land of the Orient. During the Raj, some of these individuals returned to Britain with a fortune valued in the hundreds of thousands of pounds in those days. These men also had the privilege of owning a province and its people, while furthering the crown’s interest.

Closer to the modern day, we’ve had the Orakzais, Abbasis and Jhagras take up this post; albeit with a few changes in order and frequency. The question today is: how relevant is the governor’s office in 2016?

The electoral history of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa is seemingly in a state of déjà vu in strict Jungian terms. Even if one does not dive deep into the archives, a cursory glance from 1901 and it seems the arguments and turmoil remain the same. In our times, these are known as the FATA Reforms.

There is no doubt Iqbal Zafar Jhagra is a seasoned politician, but his personal electoral history does not make very happy reading under democratically-held elections. However, will his appointment as a representative of the federation usher in the change others have been criticised for failing to bring? Can he perhaps even expedite the process of the reforms?

These are difficult times indeed, but when has the case been any different? The governor of K-P has always had a special place in the tough terrain of the power dynamics of the province. He is not just the governor of the province, but has control of Fata and this makes him special.

He is the head of an apex committee, one of the highest decision making bodies which includes the corps commander of the military and the chief minister of K-P.

The timeframe provided for the return of internally displaced persons is December 2016. The FATA Secretariat, which is also the governor’s domain, has been criticised for holding up funds and slowing down repatriation.

The Centre and the province have been at loggerheads since long, but the last governor played his role in trying to lower temperatures on various issues.

Sardar Mehtab Ahmed, who had a reputation of being a stern administrator, managed to initiate the process of streamlining Fata. However, his critics, some of whom are in his Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz party, accused the former governor of being the biggest hindrance. This has even been conveyed to the prime minister and the president on different occasions.

Can Jhagra be the man in the annals of history to take the much-needed steps others dared not? Does PML-N have something up its sleeve that we are unaware of? Or has Jhagra risen with political backing to succeed where others failed?

Published in The Express Tribune, March 2^nd, 2016.