MQM MPA and the new provincial minister for Industries Rauf Siddiqui addressing the house on Tuesday. PHOTO: NNI
So when the MPAs threw questions at the minister, they had to recall that he was no stranger to the limelight and knew how to work the camera. After all, he has made fiery statements about a former home minister, resigned over the Baldia factory incident and is always dressed for the occasion.
The MPAs might have thought they had him figured out but Siddiqui threw them off by showing that he was a fast learner.
Siddiqui, who has held the industries and commerce portfolio for less than a week, had come prepared to answer questions about budgets, employment, Sindhi topis, ajraks and the catwalk.
Pakistan Peoples Party's (PPP) Ghazala Siyal and Nasir Shah, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf's Dr Seema Zia and Muttahida Qaumi Movement's (MQM) Bilqees Mukhtar asked the minister some tough questions about why certain areas lacked industrial growth, why enough work wasn't being done and what he planned to do about it. The minister responded to all question and before taking his seat again, asked the MPAs to help him help them. He said that if they felt something wasn't being done right or if there was something they thought he could do, they could just give him a call.
After an hour-long discussion on small-scale industries, it looked like the House was ready to start talking about the budget. When senior minister Nisar Khuhro stood up to present a resolution against load-shedding, it became obvious that the budget could not and would not be brought up.
There were three words that set his blood boiling on Tuesday. Abid. Sher. Ali.
The minister was incensed at how the state minister for power had gotten away with calling Sindh and its people ‘thieves’. What made him angrier was the flippancy with which Ali keeps ordering feeders to be shut down and increasing the hours of load-shedding without informing or caring about what the residents would go through.
Feeding off Khuhro's anger, many members who usually stay quiet and leave minutes after the session starts, remained in their seats and waited for their turn to speak out against Ali. Speak would be a mild way of putting it because these MPAs screamed till their voices grew hoarse.
An MQM MPA stood up and asked what Ali had against Sindhis. "He is like Sultan Rahi running towards Sindh with a gandasa," he said.
To which a PPP MPA responded, "Sultan Rahi was a hero, Ali is a villain."
MQM's Faisal Subzwari and Muhammad Hussain, Pakistan Muslim League-Functional's Mehtab Rashidi and Nusrat Seher Abbasi, PPP's Sikandar Shoro, Khursheed Junejo and many others supported Khuhro's resolution — an issue which he claimed was nothing less than a matter of life and death.
Maybe it was the heat wave or the load-shedding at their own residences that got the MPAs so livid with anger but whatever it was, Abid Sher Ali should consider himself warned. The members of the Sindh Assembly do not like him.
Published in The Express Tribune, April 30th, 2014.
COMMENTS (2)
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He already has made his fair share of enemies in Khyber Pukhtunkhwa and now turning towards Sindh. Abid specializes in calling people thief.
There is no such thing as free lunch. It will be better if provinces buy electricity from Federal government and distribute at its will. And at that point if they want to give electricity to their people free then so be it. Until then everyone who uses electricity must learn to pay for it. These resolution don't mean anything!