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Raja Pervaiz Ashraf is Pakistan’s new PM
Ashraf won by 211 votes against Mehtab Abbasi who secured 89 votes in the elections
Kunal Majumder
New Delhi
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Raja Pervaiz Ashraf |
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Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) member Raja Pervaiz Ashraf has been elected the Prime Minister by the National Assembly of Pakistan on Friday, 22 June. A member of Parliament from Rawalpindi, Ashraf won by 211 votes against Mehtab Abbasi who secured 89 votes.
The election of Ashraf comes after a lot of political drama, which saw non-bailable warrant being issued against the original choice Makhdoom Shahbuddin, an alternative covering candidate in form of Information & Broadcasting minister Qamar Zaman Kaira pushed at the last moment and opposition leader JUI-F chief Maualana Fazlur Rehman pushing himself as a consensus candidate.
The National Assembly that met on the evening of 22 June for a special session to elect its new leader saw quite a performance by Fazlur Rehman. He first insisted on postponing the session to honour the memory of two former members. Then he proposed himself forward as a consensus candidate for both the treasury and opposition benches. And finally he announced he was withdrawing his nomination for prime ministership and that his party shall not vote in this election.
Shahabuddin, who earlier in the day got an anticipatory bail from Peshawar, and Kaira withdrew their candidacy leaving Ashraf and PML-N’s Sardar Mehtab Ahmed Khan Abbasi as only two candidates for the leader of the House.
Uncertainty about Ashraf’s future continues as the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry has already instructed criminal proceedings against Ashraf guilty of large-scale embezzlements in rental power projects. In April 2012, the National Accountability Bureau had asked the State Bank of Pakistan to freeze all bank transactions conducted by Ashraf among seven others in the rental power project case. PPP announced that in case of an arrest warrant against Ashraf, the party would go for mid-term elections.
Kunal Majumder is a Principal Correspondent with Tehelka.
kunal@tehelka.com
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