Sardar Usman Buzdar: Political career of the new Chief Minister Punjab
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ISLAMABAD - Sardar Usman Buzdar, the PTI's chief minister nominee is an advocate and a landlord by profession. Born in May 1969, in the tribal stretch of Dera Ghazi Khan in Punjab, Buzdar is the eldest of five brothers and sisters.
While he received his early education from his family village, Barthi, he later enrolled at Multan’s Bahauddin Zakariya University for a masters in political science and then completed an LLB.
Sardar Fateh Muhammad Khan Buzdar, his father, served as a Grade 14 teacher at a local school, but soon took a liking for politics. He was elected to the provincial assembly three times from DG Khan – 1985-88, 2002-2007 and 2008-2013 – as a member of the Pakistan Muslim League-Q.
In the meantime, the younger Buzdar was also kick-starting his own political career. In August 2001, when Pakistan held local bodies election under General Pervez Musharraf, he managed to secure the position of nazim (local elected official) twice and stayed affiliated with his father’s party. But in the 2013 general polls, he contested for a provincial assembly constituency, from the Pakistan Muslim League-N platform, and lost.
In May, Buzdar switched parties again. Using the Janoobi Punjab Suba Mahaz movement, he and several other South Punjab members of national and provincial assembly defected from the PML-N to its rival PTI. On July 25, he won PP-286 (DG Khan) with over 26,000 votes.
In a video message, delivered late last night, Imran Khan said the advocate was chosen because he hails from the most impoverished area of Punjab. “These people have no water, no electricity, no hospitals. People there are living in the stone ages.” The village Barthi, in the tribal belt of DG Khan, is deprived of all basic facilities.
The population of 300,000 has no access to clean drinking water, electricity, proper roads and neither does it have a single college. Even though uranium deposits were mined from the adjoining villages of Nanganai and Taunsa to give Pakistan its first nuclear bomb.
Khan further added that Buzdar does not even have electricity at his own home. As unbelievable as that may sound, it is true.
His home in the tribal areas has no power like the rest of the homes in the village. But his family owns another house in the city of DG Khan, where his wife and three daughters live. That residence is equipped with basic utilities.
