Mumtaz Bhutto laid to rest

The funeral rites of former Sindh chief minister and governor, Mumtaz Ali Khan Bhutto, were held in Larkana on Monday.

He was laid to rest in his ancestral graveyard of Mirpur Bhutto in Larkana district. The veteran politician passed away at a private hospital on Sunday after a protracted illness at the age of 88 years. He has left behind two sons, Ameer Baksh Bhutto and Ali Haidar, as well as two daughters and a widow.

His funeral prayers were attended by a number of people from various walks of life including notable politicians, journalists, relatives, party workers and villagers.

Bhutto was born on November 28, 1933 in the village of Mirpur Bhutto in Larkana district. His father, Nawab Nabi Bakhsh Khan Bhutto, was a member of the legislative assembly and had a strong political background before partition.

The deceased attended St George's College in Mussoori and then Lawrence College, Murree. He got his law degree from Lincoln's Inn, and masters degree from Oxford University in 1959.

He became an MNA at the young age of 32 in 1965. He was one of the founding members of the Pakistan Peoples Party when his cousin and former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (ZAB) formed in 1967.

Bhutto, along with ZAB, contested the 1970 general election and emerged victorious. Subsequently, he was appointed as the Sindh governor on December 24, 1971, and then as the Sindh chief minister on May 1, 1972. ZAB would call him his `talented cousin`.

As the then CM he made Sindhi language the official language of the province by introducing the Sindhi Language Bill 1972 in the assembly, which was passed with assenting votes out of 62. However, the law was met with rioting and unrest following which Bhutto resigned from his post and served as a federal minister instead.

When General Ziaul Haq toppled the ZAB government, Bhutto was arrested and later exiled. He again became the caretaker chief minister of Sindh in 1996 after the PPP government was toppled by the then president Farooq Leghari.

He later parted ways with the PPP, and joined various alliances including the Sindhi Baloch Pashtun Front and Sindh Qaumi Ittehad. He finally launched his own party, the Sindh National Front (SNF) and proposed the idea of a confederation system in Pakistan. Bhutto and his son Ameer Bux Bhutto contested many elections from the platform of the SNF and later joined the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) in 2012. He left the PML-N in 2015 over differences with the leadership. He then revived his own party. But again, he merged the SNF with the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) in 2017.

After the 2018 general election, however, Bhutto disassociated himself from the PTI and his son was also replaced by another PTI leader.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 20^th, 2021.