Pakistani President to rename candidate for PM slot on Friday
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E-mail Xinhua, June 22, 2012
A high-level meeting chaired by the Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari late on Thursday night decided to rename the candidate for the prime minister slot and the new candidate will be announced on Friday morning.
Presidential spokesman Farhatullah Babar said that President Zardari had consulted leaders of the allied groups on the name of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) candidate and they had empowered the President to make a decision and a final announcement will be made at 11 a.m.local time on Friday, hours before the National Assembly will elect the new Prime Minister.
PPP and its allies had earlier nominated Makhdoom Shahabuddin for the prime minister slot left over on Tuesday following the disqualification of the then Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani by the Supreme Court due to his conviction of contemp of court, but the name of Shahabuddin was dropped after an anti- narcotics court issued an arrest warrant for his alleged involvement in a corruption case.
The Anti-Narcotics Court's judge on Thursday issued warrants for the arrest of Shahabuddin for misuse of his power as Minister for Health to grant excessive quota of a chemical used in a controlled drug minutes after he had submitted his papers to the National Assembly secretariat for the prime minister slot as the first candidate recommended by PPP.
The arrest warrants caused huge embarrassment for PPP and its allies and President Zardari summoned an emergency meeting of the senior leaders of the allied groups and decided to field another candidate to replace Shahabuddin.
Ashraf, a PPP loyalist and former Minister for Water and Power, had filed nomination papers as a covering candidate for Shahabuddin. Another senior PPP leader and former information Minister Qamar-uz-Zaman Kaira had also submitted nomination papers after the arrest warrants were issued for Shahabuddin.
Local media reported that a major allied group of PPP suggested the President to nominate Qamar-uz-Zaman Kaira as the first candidate for the next prime minister as Raja Pervez Asharf is also facing some corruption cases, but PPP leaders and allied parties had agreed on the nomination of Raja Pervez Ashraf, they said.
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