Nawaz Sharif , former Prime Minister of Pakistan has been elected unopposed as Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) president. The three-time former PM was re-elected unopposed six years after losing the post following a Supreme Court ruling in the Panama Papers case.
He returned to Pakistan in October last year after a four-year self-imposed exile in the UK, was elected at the General Council meeting of the PML-N in Lahore, his party said in a post on X. Earlier, his party while sharing a video of preparations for the General Council meeting, had said: “Lion is returning to take his rightful place at the top.”
PML-N Punjab president Rana Sanaullah had hinted that the elder Sharif would be elected without a contest. When asked why the party didn’t adopt a democratic process to vote for a new president, Sanaullah said the party was a “servant of power corridors and it was Nawaz Sharif who made it a party of the public”. He added that after Quaid-i-Azam.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif had earlier this month resigned as the PML-N president. He said that it was time for his elder brother to “resume his rightful place as the president of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz party.” The February 8 general elections had delivered a fractured mandate and the PML-N did not get a clear majority.
It joined hands with the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) led by Bilawal Zardari Bhutto and other smaller parties to form the government at the federal level when Nawaz relinquished the post of prime minister in favour of Shehbaz.
Much before that, in 2017, Nawaz Sherriff had stepped down as the country’s prime minister after the Supreme Court disqualified him for life from holding public office for not declaring a receivable salary. Following his trial in the Panama Papers case, the apex court, in February 2018, disqualified him as the party’s president.