Zardari elected Pak president

PTI

Islamabad/Lahore, March 9

Asif Ali Zardari was overwhelmingly elected as the 14th President of Pakistan on Saturday, becoming the only civilian president of the coup-prone country for a second time. Zardari, the co-chairperson of the Pakistan Peoples Party, was the joint candidate of the ruling alliance of the PPP and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N).

Oath ceremony today

• Asif Ali Zardari, co-chairperson of the Pakistan Peoples Party, is expected to be sworn in on Sunday.
• He is known for his shady past due to his alleged involvement in corruption during the two terms of his wife as PM.

His rival, Mahmood Khan Achakzai, is the head of his Pashtoonkhwa Milli Awami Party (PkMAP). He was fielded by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, headed by jailed former PM Imran Khan and backed by the Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC). “Asif Ali Zardari is the first civilian president in the history of Pakistan who was elected for a second term,” the PPP posted on X soon after the election results were announced by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP).

He is expected to be sworn in on Sunday. Zardari, 68, received 255 votes while his 75-year-old opponent got 119 votes in the National Assembly and the Senate. The new president was elected by the electoral college of the newly elected members of the National Assembly and the four provincial assemblies, which formed the electoral college. A businessman-turned-politician, Zardari is the husband of slain Pakistan PM Benazir Bhutto. Zardari has been haunted by his shady past due to his alleged involvement in cases of mega corruption during the two terms of his wife as PM, when he earned the derogatory nickname of ‘Mr 10 per cent’ for allegedly getting his share of bribes in development projects. He was named in many cases of corruption and spent several years behind bars, even facing custodial violence, but he was neither convicted nor lost his trademark smile, and, ultimately, he was cleared in all cases.

As he starts his second term in office, the country faces a battered economic and political system with a greater need for reconciliation than any time before, and Zardari’s innate ability to bring people with clashing ideas to the table would be put to the test. He may have to play a role in bringing about a reconciliation between the new government and Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party which has claimed that their mandate was stolen in the February 8 elections.

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