Transitions: Abdul Salam Thaheem, the land owner who wasn’t a wadera, dies

The 62-year-old leader is remembered for his activism against the Ziaul Haq regime.

HYDERABAD: Even though they are surrounded by feudal politics, the people of Tayyab Thaheem village remember Abdul Salam Thaheem as a humble man who steered clear from “wadera culture”.

The Sindh minister for technical education passed away on Saturday and was laid to rest on Sunday at Dargah Hassan Shah graveyard in his village in Sanghar district. The 62-year-old had been ill for a while.

Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah, Law Minister Ayaz Soomro, Senator Aajiz Dhamrah, other MNAs and MPAs and a large number of people from the area offered the Namaz-i-Janaza.

The minister was born on January 1, 1950, in Shahdadpur. He entered politics when he was still a student in 1965. However, he graduated in 2004, after former president Pervez Musharraf enforced the condition of being a graduate to contest the elections.

In 1969, he became Pakistan Peoples Party president for Shahdadpur taluka and subsequently of Sanghar district and Hyderabad division as well. He was elected a member of the Sindh Assembly thrice from Shahdadpur PS-83 in 1988, 1993 and 2008 and has held the portfolios for excise, education, wildlife, technical education among others in the provincial cabinet.

Thaheem’s most memorable service was the part he played in the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy (MRD) against the Ziaul Haq regime. “He spent six years in jail while military operations went on in his village,” recalled MPA Fida Hussain Dero from Thaheem’s neighbouring constituency, PS-82. “Shaheed Benazir Bhutto later visited the village and expressed solidarity with the victims of the operation.”

Pakistan Muslim League-Functional’s Jam Madad Ali said that remembers the minister as a straightforward, honest and hardworking politician. “He was close to his people,” he added. Thaheem is survived by a widow and four sons, one of whom, Shahid Thaeem, was elected as a union council nazim in 2006.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 23^rd, 2012.