LARKANA: Convener of the Larkana Awami Ittehad (LAI) Haji Munawwar Ali Abbasi, who died in Karachi on Friday night at the age of 76, was laid to rest in the Arab Pir graveyard in Waleed town on Saturday.

His son, MPA Moazzam Ali Abbasi of the Grand Democratic Alliance (GDA), said that his father was suffering from respiratory issues.

The deceased belonged to the well-reputed political Abbasi family that had a long association with Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) founder chairman and former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and slain prime minister Benazir Bhutto. The family braved political ups and downs and proactively participated in the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy in 1983.

Former PPP senator Dr Safdar Abbasi, who also served as the political secretary to Benazir Bhutto, is the younger brother of Haji Munawwar Ali Abbasi.

Hundreds of people from different shades of life and members of his caste attended the funeral.

Late Munawwar Ali Abbasi, commonly known as ‘Haji sahib’, had formed Abbasi-Kalhora Tanzeem for the general welfare of the community and headed it till his last breath. Under his watch the organisation spread throughout the province. Holding free eye camps was a major feature of the organisation which extended scholarships to deserving students.

Haji sahib was a close aide to Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and had remained Larkana PPP’s general secretary in 1973. In 1979, he was elected to the Larkana district council and later in the same year he became chairman of Larkana taluka council. He got his primary education from a village school and passed his matriculation from the Govt Pilot Secondary School in 1960. He did his graduation from Govt College Larkana in 1966 and obtained a law degree from the Law College Larkana in 1979.

Haji sahib won an MPA seat five times between 1988 and 2007. He won the election twice from Warah and twice from Mirokhan.

He held the provincial portfolios of minister for local government and minister for population welfare and transport after 1988. In 1997, he was elected chairman of the Larkana municipal committee.

Differences had surfaced between the Abbasi family and [former president] Asif Ali Zardari-led PPP after Benazir Bhutto’s assassination. It was Dr Safdar Abbasi, having served as her political secretary, who spoke his mind in PPP’s central executive committee after which a stage arrived when the Abbasi family of Waleed was seen as practically outcast from the party.

And finally in 2013, the Abbasis parted ways with the Zardari-led PPP and even challenged it in provincial elections by forming different political alliances.

At one stage, the Larkana Awami Ittehad (LAI) was formed and Sardar Mumtaz Ali Bhutto was made its convener. Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) also allied itself with the LAI to challenge PPP in Sindh. With day in and day out efforts, Moazzam Ali Abbasi won a Larkana seat by defeating PPP’s candidate and made his presence in Sindh Assembly as the GDA candidate from Larkana.

PPP kept fighting a legal battle and got Moazzam unseated but he did not stop his political journey and again, in a by-election, defeated PPP’s candidate.

In the present circumstances, Moazzam Abbasi is shouldered with heavy responsibilities after the death of his father. It is also a new political challenge for the Abbasi family where two former political secretaries to Benazir Bhutto — Dr Safdar Abbasi and Ms Naheed Khan — and MPA Moazzam Abbasi are set to move forward under the flag of GDA and LAI.

Published in Dawn, June 28th, 2020