‘State, Balochistan separatists should show flexibility’

ISLAMABAD: Newly-elected Senator from the Balochistan National Party-Mengal (BNP-M) Dr Jehanzeb Jamaldeni Friday urged the state and the estranged Baloch elements to show flexibility in their respective positions of no return and end the deadlock.
“For ending the deadlock and making progress towards peace, both the state of Pakistan and Baloch separatists will have to review their respective positions,” said the soft-spoken senator from Balochistan during an informal chat with The News here.
He contended that the role of the state was just like a mother, therefore, there must be immediate steps to make the environment conducive. “Besides freeing nationalists, the sense of fear and intimidation should be replaced by congenial political environment,” he emphasised.
The BNP-M legislator pointed out that his leadership had presented the case of people of Balochistan before the Supreme Court and what are the problems of Balochistan are known to all and sundry.
Jamaldeni, who has done MBBS, and ran a hospital in Karachi for years, alleged that the past was too bitter to be mentioned, as he alleged that noted Baloch leaders were executed after they climbed downfrom the mountains despite huge assurances. Some were jailed for several years, he added.
The BNP-M, which had quit the Parliament for some years after it felt that this option was not delivering at all when it came to serving the interests of people of Balochistan and resolution of their deep-rooted problems, has representation now in the Balochistan Assembly, the National Assembly as well as the Senate.
There are speculations that Jamaldeni might be assigned ‘some assignment’ at the federal level, following a meeting Thursday between Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and BNP-M president Sardar Akhtar Mengal, who is son of former chief minister of Balochistan Sardar Attaullah Mengal.
When asked about electoral performance of his party, the BNP-M senator claimed that they were confident of winning at least 12 seats of the provincial assembly, but their mandate was scuttled drastically, reducing their tally of seats to just two.
“Things were tailor-made to suit Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party. However, we pushed ahead with our option of parliamentary politics despite all odds, though we had faced a lot of pressure from a section of Balochistan people not to run in 2013 polls,” he maintained.
He said Balochistan’s major issues are political suffocation, missing of Baloch nationalists, illiteracy, health problems and denial of due share in natural resources to the largest but most backward province of Pakistan.
He believed that the path of parliamentary democracy and dialogue were the best options to address the Balochistan problem and insisted that his people were not asking for the moon, just wanted to be equal citizens of Pakistan with other provinces.
Jamaldeni noted that a pact was signed with late ex-chief minister Balochistan Nawab Akbar Bugti, but some radical elements came in the way and everything was undone in a tragic way.At the end, he called upon the state to show magnanimity and initiate a process of enabling environment in Balochistan and then take measures to convince the estranged Baloch leaders to return to Pakistan.