Newsmaker: Makhdoom struggles in race for PM

Only a few weeks ago, Pakistan People's Party (PPP) candidate Makhdoom Amin Fahim took off from a brilliant start in a race for the country's new prime minister, and it looked like he would win it by a clear margin.

Now with the inaugural session of National Assembly set for today, the finishing line seems out of reach.

Unless there's a complete turnaround, Makhdoom Amin Fahim, whom many thought would be President General Pervez Musharraf's prime minister, will never hold that high office.

Pakistan Muslim League (Quaid-e-Azam group), dubbed by many as the kings party, Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), an alliance of religious parties, and former prime minister Benazir Bhutto's PPP emerged as three leading political parties from the October 10 elections. But none of them had a clear majority and with a hung parliament, the political manoeuvring began in earnest.

With Benazir in exile and the present government's reform law barring her from contesting the elections, the PPP nominated the 59-year-old Makhdoom as party chief. Benazir's absence from the country was like winning a lottery for this politician.

Throughout his political career which spanned over almost three decades, he was never considered for such a top slot. It defied even his own imagination.

Fahim's ties with the PPP are longstanding. His family, the Makhdooms of Hala, particularly his father Talibul Maula was the right-hand man of Benazir's father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

Talibul Maula was also the head of a Jamaat with a massive following in the country and in neighbouring India with linkages to a Pir, or a spiritual leader of Gaddi Nau Lakha, a shrine of 900,000 disciples.

After his father's death, Fahim succeeded his father to the spiritual leadership of the shrine, the head of Jamaat and the electoral post. Although his father did not contest elections, Fahim has been receiving party tickets for polls and has remained a member of National Assembly since 1970.

Even General Zia-ul-Haq, the military dictator, knowing the influence of spiritual leaders, did not imprison him for long, at a time where mass arrests were being made against the PPP-led movement for restoration of democracy.

Once Benazir returned to Pakistan in 1986, two years before the death of Zia, Fahim and his brothers grew close to Benazir. Every young feudal lord and a politician were keen to marry the "princess of democracy". Fahim's younger brother, Khaleequzzaman was one such aspirant, who quit the party after Benazir married Asif Ali Zardari.

In 1988, when Benazir became the prime minister Fahim was in her federal cabinet. But he was never a major player. During Benazir's second tenure in 1990-93, Fahim was again a federal minister, but he still did not have a following in the party .

"No doubt Makhdooms are influential and they have a huge number of disciples, but they know their politics will be alive only if allied with Bhutto politics in Sindh. Fahim's father remained in the shadow of Benazir's father. Now he himself is politically under the shadow of Benazir," says Hyderabad-based analyst, Naz Sehto.

"Fahim might not be charismatic politician but he is smart enough to wait patiently for his moment," he says.

Just after the elections, when Fahim was nominated for PM slot, he immediately used his contacts at the 'right places".

Be it "chance" meetings with President General Musharraf or Maulana Fazlur Rehman, Fahim was trying to parlay his contacts to win the post of prime minister. On the one hand he talked about a national government of consensus, a bid to appease Musharraf and the military, and on the other pacify Benazir and the party leadership that he is trying to cut a deal for Benazir's return and the release of her jailed husband, Asif Ali Zardari.

Many saw Fahim's hobnobbing with the other side as a "betrayal."

"This was the first time he tried to come out of Bhutto's shadow, but unfortunately for him it seems that Benazir and party leadership and the establishment both ditched him," says the editor of Sindhi language newspaper, Kaawish, Ali Qazi.

But Fahim is still trying to negotiate with the religious parties, in a last ditch effort to breast the tape before anybody else does. But as is more than obvious, the distance to the finishing line is becoming greater and greater.