- 186 MPAs vote for Buzdar, Hamza gets 159 votes
- PTI, allies have 185 seats, PML-N has 130 MPAs
LAHORE: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s (PTI) Usman Buzdar has won the race for Punjab chief minister (CM) bringing the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz’s (PML-N) reign in the country’s largest province to an end.
PTI’s Buzdar was opposed by Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) candidate Hamza Shehbaz for Punjab’s top office.
As much as 186 members of provincial assembly (MPAs) voted for PTI’s candidate while Hamza garnered 159 votes.
The Punjab Assembly Session was chaired by Speaker Pervaiz Elahi and PML-N’s MPAs, present in the assembly with black armbands, surrounded the speaker’s dice as Speaker Elahi signalled the start of the proceedings.
The speaker had earlier ordered the bells to be rung for five minutes after which the voting commenced.
The session had started after an hour’s delay.
The elected CM will take oath on August 20 at Punjab Governor House.
The newly elected CM was born in 1969 as the eldest son among five brothers and sisters, and he is a landlord and advocate by profession.
Buzdar received his early education in his village and later went on to complete a masters in political science and an LLB from Multan’s Bahauddin Zakariya University.
On Saturday, Buzdar was given the go-ahead by the Punjab Assembly Secretariat to contest the election following allegations that the PTI nominee had faced a corruption probe and was also acquitted in the murder of six persons in 1998 after allegedly paying blood money. Hamza Shehbaz’s nomination papers were also cleared by the assembly officials after scrutiny.
The PTI and its allies hold 185 seats in the 371-strong house, while the PML-N enjoys the support of 130 members. The PML-N has already lost the elections of the speaker and deputy speaker to the PTI-led alliance in Punjab. PML-Q’s Pervaiz Elahi and PTI’s Dost Mazari emerged victorious in the elections, respectively.
Hamza’s chances to bag the office vacated by his father, Shehbaz Sharif, had become bleak after the opposition Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) announced that it would abstain from voting for the PML-N candidates for prime minister and Punjab CM. Although the PPP has only six lawmakers in the House, its withdrawal of support to the PML-N has dealt a severe blow to the fragile coalition of at least 11 opposition parties.
However, PML-N leader Mujtaba Shujaur Rehman had claimed that his party had secured the support of as many as 159 members for the election of Punjab CM.
“We need the support of as many as 161 members, our two members have gone for Hajj but the independent members are with us,” he had told reporters.
Ahead of the session, PML-N’s candidate Hamza had also told reporters, “We are only taking oaths because we want the process of democracy to continue.”
“We will not climb on containers and hurl abuses,” he added.
Buzdar had garnered 26,897 votes from PP-286 Taunsa Sharif and defeated independent candidate Khawaja Muhammad Nizamul Mehmood in the recently held general elections.
Earlier, he had remained a member of Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) from 2002-2008 and later switched to the PML-N. In 2013, he had contested the elections on PML-N’s ticket but lost to a PPP candidate.
His father, Fatah Muhammad Buzdar, is the chief of Buzdar tribe as well as a former lawmaker from Punjab.
He had recently joined PTI along with fellow tribal leader Javed Akhtar Lund.
Moreover, the new Punjab CM and his father were booked for killing at least six persons during the 1998 elections and had been declared as offenders by a court in 2000; however, the Buzdar family allegedly gave Rs 7,500,000 in diyat (blood money) for a compromise with the affected families.
Besides murder, Buzdar was also accused of corrupt practices during his stint as tehsil nazim of Dera Ghazi Khan district during former dictator General (r) Pervez Musharraf’s era.
Furthermore, the 49-year-old Punjab CM paid his taxes in 2017 for the first time even though he owns assets worth Rs 25 million
IMRAN STANDS BY BUZDAR:
Soon after allegations against the PTI nominee started making rounds on the social media on Saturday, PTI chairman and newly-elected Prime Minister Imran Khan had refused to pay heed to the allegations against Buzdar, saying the latter has “integrity and stands by my vision and ideology of Naya Pakistan”.
“I want to make it clear I stand by our nominee Usman Buzdar for CM Punjab. I have done my due diligence over the past 2 weeks & have found him to be an honest man. He has integrity & stands by my vision & ideology of Naya Pakistan,” wrote Imran on his twitter handle.
Imran’s tweets in defence of Buzdar come at a time when his nomination has been marred with controversy as, besides all these allegations, the party’s old guard was also unhappy with the nomination.
