By: Ahmed Khan
Introduction.
He was Born on 23 September 1950. His father was an upper-middle-class businessman and industrialist whose family had emigrated from Anantnag in Kashmir for business and eventually settled in the village of Jati Umra in Amritsar.
Political career.
This man then began his political career after getting elected to the Provincial Assembly of Punjab from Constituency PP-122 (Lahore-VII) as a candidate of Islami Jamhoori Ittihad in 1988 general election. He was re-elected to the Provincial Assembly of Punjab from Constituency PP-124 (Lahore-IX) as a candidate for IJI. He was re-elected to the Provincial Assembly of Punjab from Constituency PP-125 (Lahore-X) as a candidate of (PML-N) in the 1993 general election. He was also he was elected to the National Assembly from Constituency NA-96. His term as Member of the Punjab Assembly and the Leader of the Opposition prematurely ended in November 1996, when the assemblies were dissolved.
He was elected as the Chief Minister of Punjab for the first time and was sworn in as 13th Chief Minister of Punjab on 20 February 1997. During his tenure as Chief Minister of Punjab, he was praised for his good governance in the province because of his focus on health, education, agriculture, and industrial sectors. He undertook several development projects in Lahore and launched a crackdown on criminals across the province to maintain law and order in the province.
He held his office until 12 October 1999 when was removed from the post of Chief Minister in the 1999 coup of General Pervaiz Musharraf, following the coup he was imprisoned.
He was not allowed to take part in the 2008 general election due to the charges of murder but In 2008, he was acquitted in the 1998 extrajudicial killings case.
He then won the BY-polls held in June 2008. He was re-elected as the Chief Minister of Punjab unopposed after securing 265 votes. His second term as Chief Minister lasted until 25 February 2009, when the Supreme Court of Pakistan declared him ineligible to hold public office which took away his seat in the Punjab Assembly and thereby removed him from office as Chief Minister. On 1 April 2009, a five-member larger bench of the Supreme Court overturned an earlier decision of the apex court, in which he was disqualified from holding public office. As a result, he returned to the office as Chief Minister.
In 2013 general elections he was re-elected to the Provincial Assembly of Punjab from three Constituencies PP-159 (Lahore-XXIII), PP-161 (Lahore-XXV) and PP-247 (Rajanpur-I) - as a candidate of PML-N in 2013. In the same election, he was re-elected to the National Assembly from Constituency NA-129 (Lahore-XII) as a candidate of PML-N. but he opted to retain his Provincial Assembly seat PP-159 (Lahore-XXIII) and was re-elected as the Chief Minister of Punjab for the third time unopposed after securing 300 votes in the 371-members Provincial Assembly.
crises
Crisis management.
1. In early 2009 Punjab met one of the worst flour crisis. It was him who eventually defeated the crisis by making timely policies and by having a good team that stood by him, whenever he was in tough situations.
2. In 2010 and 2012 Punjab met with one of the deadliest and devastating floods of all time many people were killed and many were displaced. Millions of acres of land were destroyed which resulted in food shortage but even in this tough situation this man stood with people of his province irrespective of their political and regional identity. He himself went to the affected areas and inspected all the sites
3. The Punjab government led by this man-made a herculean effort to fight the dengue epidemic in 2011 and managed to control it. He worked on the problem day and night and eventually his team introduced a smartphone app that could insert the picture of any site and GPs location of it to determine from where the picture was taken.
This project was started in 2011 and till 2016, 17 million such pictures were taken.
Conclusion.
Now I think everyone would have correctly guessed this man who has been referred to as "He" in this entire article. Yes, I am talking about the three-time chief minister of Punjab Shahbaz Sharif.
I think that in the last 20 years Pakistan has never got any man like Shahbaz Sharif whose timely and wise decisions had saved the country from crises which could have changed the country's map in terms of health, food, etc.
On the other hand, we have the current PTI government in Punjab and Federal, but they lack the ability of crisis management as we saw in 2018 Faizabad dharna or the flour crisis which emerged at the start of 2020 or the current Corona Virus.
(Image from here.)
Comments