Fazl ur-Rahman

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Maulana Fazl ur-Rahman (Urdu: مولانا فضل الرحمان ) is the son of Mufti Mahmud (Former provincial Chief Minister). He is Ameer (President) of his political party Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (Assembly of Pakistani Clergy). He is originally from the Abdulkhel Banyala area in the Dera Ismail Khan district of North-West Frontier Province, Pakistan. He serves as the opposition leader in the National Assembly of Pakistan.

[edit] Life

Fazl ur-Rahman inherited from his father mass public support from their native area of Dera Ismail Khan. Of the four general elections that Fazl ur-Rahman contested since 1988 from his national assembly constituency, NA-18, he won two with convincing margins. In the two he lost - in 1990 and 1997 - were, as his supporters put it, more because of the engineered results that entrusted heavy mandates to the Sharifs of Lahore on both the occasions. It was because of the family's mass public support and large vote bank in the Dera Ismail Khan constituency that Maulana Mufti Mahmood was the lone leader in Pakistan who had defeated the then invincible Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in the 1970 general elections.

Fazl ur-Rahman's politics, like his father's, has been at odds with the Muslim League. The father was in Jama'at Ulema-i-Hind (Madani group) which shared the views of the Congress on the partition issue. Fazl ur-Rahman remained in the camp of the political alliances and parties that were opposed to Nawaz Sharif's League. Only once did he contest the election in alliance with the PML, in 1990, and then too he lost.

Fazl ur-Rahman built his public image by supporting Zulfaqir Ali Bhutto's daughter Benazir Bhutto during her second term as the prime minister. His cooperation with the PPP to some extent diminished temporarily his party's image of an anti-secular religio-political entity. His involvement in some financial scandals, specially the charges levelled against him of supplying permits for exporting diesel from Pakistan to Afghanistan, also threw a blot on the party's reputation.