Nawaz Sharif, three-time former prime minister of Pakistan, was on Tuesday elected unopposed as the president of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) party after a hiatus of six years, the PML-N said.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif resigned as the PML-N president earlier this month saying it was time for his elder brother to “resume his rightful place” as the party’s leader.
Sharif, who founded the PML-N in 1993, stepped down as its president in 2018 after the Supreme Court ruled that an individual disqualified under Articles 62 and 63 of the constitution, which outline the rules for qualification and disqualification for parliamentarians, could not serve as the head of a political party.
Around 3,500 members of the PML-N’s general council and senior leadership attended a party meeting in Lahore, at which the PML-N chief election commissioner, Rana Sanaullah, announced Sharif’s election as the party chief which was endorsed by the gathering.
“Call those who decided that Sharif was disqualified forever as today, I am standing before you again,” Sharif said, while addressing the PML-N general council meeting after his election. “These party general council members are our assets and remain steadfast during a difficult time.”
Sharif congratulated his party’s members and his younger brother for steadfastly holding onto the party banner through tribulations, and urged the prime minister to turn around Pakistan’s situation, noting that the PML-N had always delivered and brought the country out of troubled times.
As Sharif faced a slew of cases, Shehbaz Sharif, his younger brother, subsequently became president of the PML-N but had always maintained it was a temporary arrangement until his brother was exonerated by the courts.
