AMN
Shahid Khaqan Abbasi of PML-N’s was sworn in as the Prime Minister of Pakistan on August 1, 2017. He was elected by the lawmakers of Pakistan national Assembly bagging 221 votes to become the successor to ousted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. Though he will be an interim PM for 45 days, he will have spent crucial time of political crisis in the country.
58 year old Abbasi, an electrical engineer with a master’s degree was the minister of petroleum and natural resources in Nawaz Sharif’s third term, which ended on July 28, 2017 after the Supreme Court of Pakistan disqualified him as Pakistan’s prime minister.
Abbasi has remained mostly unbeaten in his political career, having only lost to PPP candidate Ghulam Murtaza Satti in 2002. He has won every election he has contested in from 1988 till 2013.
—PROFILE–
Abbasi has represented Rawalpindi since first being elected a member of the National Assembly in 1988. He was elected after the death of his father, Khaqan Abbasi — the then minister of production.
He was elected as member of the National Assembly in the 1990 general elections for the second time and made parliamentary secretary for defence.
In the 1993 general elections, he was elected to parliament once more and held office as the chairman of the National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Defence.
Abbasi was elected again, for the fourth time, in 1997, and served as Chairman of Pakistan International Airlines from 1997 to 1999 in Nawaz Sharif’s second term.
He also held the positions of Minister for Commerce and Ministry of Defense Production in Yousuf Raza Gilani’s government in 2008.
Interestingly Abbasi is also facing a Rs220 billion corruption inquiry being carried out by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) of Pakistan. He is an accused in a NAB case registered in 2015 regarding award of a liquefied natural gas import contract.