LAHORE: After days of holding back-to-back consultations, leaders of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) have finally nominated Senator Yaqoob Khan Nasar as the acting president of the party.

“The party’s senior vice-president, Senator Sardar Yaqoob Nasar, has been nominated as the acting president for the office in line with the party’s constitution and the notice issued by the Election Com­mission of Pakistan [requiring the PML-N] to fill the vacancy,” party spokesperson Senator Dr Asif Kirmani told Dawn here on Wednesday.

“A meeting of the central working committee will be held in Islamabad today (on Thursday) to endorse the decision, as per the party’s constitution,” he said, adding that PML-N chairperson Raja Zafarul Haq would chair the CWC gathering.

Senator Nasar’s nomination is a far cry from what Mr Haq had stated on Aug 8, when he had announced that Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif had been finalised as the new PML-N president and that a formal announcement to the effect would be made within two days.

The office of the PML-N’s party chief has been vacant since former prime minister Nawaz Sharif was disqualified by the Supreme Court in the Panama Papers case on July 28. Under election laws, a person disqualified to run for elected office is not eligible to serve as an office-bearer of a political entity. The ECP, the country’s top electoral watchdog, had accordingly served the party a notice on Aug 7, requiring the PML-N to elect a new party president without delay.

The PML-N came into being in 1990, and since then, Shahbaz Sharif is the only person, other than Nawaz Sharif, to have held the office of party chief.

Mr Shahbaz had served as the party chief for three consecutive terms, between 2002 and 2011, when former prime minister Nawaz Sharif had been convicted in a plane hijacking case following Gen Musharraf’s military coup.

Sources claim that choosing someone other than Mr Shahbaz for the office this time is a hint that the ousted prime minister hopes to introduce “someone else” for the post. They believe that ex-first lady Begum Kulsoom is most likely to be the permanent replacement for the slot if the former PM’s petition to review the Panama Papers case verdict fails to undo the apex court’s order.

Mr Shahbaz had previously been touted as the next prime minister, while incumbent PM Shahid Khaqan Abbasi was to serve as a stopgap arrangement till the Punjab CM was elected to the National Assembly. The plan changed, however, after some party leaders opposed the “unnecessary” disturbance to the existing political setting.

Profile

Senator Nasar started his political career from the platform of the Pakistan Peoples Party in the late 1970s and was elected member of the Balochistan Assembly from Loralai in 1977. After Gen Ziaul Haq’s martial law, he quit the PPP and contested the party-less elections in 1985 and won a provincial assembly seat.

Sardar Nasar, who is chief of the Nasar tribe, later joined the PML and was inducted into Jam Ghulam Qadir’s cabinet as Balochistan minister for irrigation and power.

He was elected MNA and MPA twice from his home constituency on a PML-N ticket.

Sardar Nasar remained federal minister for railways from July 1997 to August 1998.

He lost the National Assembly election in 2013 against JUI-F candidate Maulana Amir Zaman.

in 2015, the PML-N got him elected as senator on a general seat from Islamabad.

Published in Dawn, August 17th, 2017