Syed Qaim Ali Shah is the only chief minister of Sindh to have completed his five-year term in his previous tenure — a record in the province’s chequered parliamentary history — from 2008 to 2013. However, he was unable to equal it in his current term as there are still two years to go.

He is still the only person alive to have been nominated twice in a row as the province’s chief executive. In the process Mr Shah has equalled Ayub Khuhro’s three stints as chief minister.

Mr Shah’s current stint tenure is still much longer than the first time he occupied the highest provincial post, which lasted a little more than a year before he was replaced by Aftab Shaban Mirani.

A problem that dogged all his three tenures was the law and order situation in Karachi, which cost him his job twice.

Along with Syed Ghous Ali Shah, his good friend of youth and political adversary, he is the second man from Khairpur to have served as chief executive of the province.

Official records show Qaim Ali Shah is going to turn 83 on Sept 13. Some family members and close friends, however, say he passed that milestone a few years ago.

Mr Shah was born and brought up in a middle-class family of Khairpur, formerly a princely state. After attending primary school there, he came to Karachi and obtained an LL.B. degree from Sindh Muslim Law College. He returned to Khairpur and began practising as a lawyer.

During the course of his practice, he struck a friendship with Ghous Ali Shah. None of the two could have known at that time that they were going to become leading politicians and long-time rivals.

The two contemporaries started their political careers by joining the Muslim League, where Pir Pagara, Shah Mardan Shah, was already there to guide them.

Qaim Ali Shah contested the elections for basic democrats (BD member) twice during military ruler Ayub Khan’s rule and was second-time lucky.

Almost one year before the founding of the PPP, he met the late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, convinced himself that he was a ‘born leader’ and joined the party.

His first task was to galvanise the youth.

He won a National Assembly seat from Khairpur in the 1970 general election and went on to become the federal minister for industries .

He won the same seat in the 1977 elections and remained loyal to his leader after Gen Ziaul Haq overthrew Mr Bhutto in July of that year.

While most critics praise Mr Shah for his loyalty to his party in distress, others accuse him of meeting president Farooq Leghari after the removal of Benazir Bhutto’s second government in 1996 — an accusation which remains unauthenticated to date. In 1989, rumours circulated that he had been mistreated by some hot-headed party youth during his first term as chief minister.

FIRST DEFEAT: Qaim Ali Shah tasted his first electoral defeat in the 1997 elections at the hands of Ghous Ali Shah, whom he had defeated thrice in consecutive elections. Then he lost the Sindh PPP presidency to Nisar Khuhro after the party’s abysmal performance in elections for the Sindh Assembly, only to regain it in 2002.

He won a party ticket to become a member of the Senate in 1997.

Qaim Ali Shah has never been a political prisoner. During the 1983 campaign by the Movement for Restoration of Democracy against Gen Zia’s dictatorial regime, he remained underground ‘as per party policy’ devised to keep some of its leaders out of jail to guide the cadres.

He became chief minister for the first time after the 1988 elections.

Mr Shah won a seat in the 1990 polls and became leader of the opposition in Sindh Assembly.

While critics accuse him of lacking in firmness and easily succumbing to pressure, others admire him for being a polite and soft-spoken person. Mr Shah carried the burden of allegations all through his three tenures.

Qaim Ali Shah was a volleyball player in his teens and an avid cinemagoer in his youth, watching Pakistani and Indian movies in Khairpur’s Javed theatre.

Mr Shah married three times; two of his wives have passed away. He has four sons and seven daughters, all of whom are highly educated and most of them in government service.

Published in Dawn, July 25th, 2016