Shahbaz appoints FM Dar as deputy prime minister
PM is pleased to designate Ishaq Dar, Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs, as Deputy Prime Minister with immediate effect and until further orders, according to an official notification
In a major development, Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif on Sunday appointed Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar as deputy premier.
The prime minister has been pleased to designate Ishaq Dar, Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs, as Deputy Prime Minister with immediate effect and until further orders, read an official notification.
Dar was appointed as the foreign minister after the Pakistan Muslim League-nawaz (PMLN) formed a coalition government following the Feb.8 general elections.
He wanted to become the finance minister but could not get the office as the military establishment wanted to keep him away and desired to give this portfolio to banker Muhammad Aurangzeb, according to reports.
Before Dar’s appointment, the then PML-Q leader Chaudhry Pervez Elahi, who is now incarcerated and is the president of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-insaf (PTI), had served as the deputy prime minister in the 2012 Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) government.
Dar has got the office of the deputy premier as the additional charge of deputy prime minister.
He served as federal minister for commerce and investment in the 1997-99 government of Nawaz Sharif and has twice served as federal minister for finance, economic affairs, revenue and statistics (1998-99 and 2008).
Prior to his first assignment as a federal minister, he was appointed minister of state/ chief executive of the Pakistan Investment Board (PIB) from 1992 to 1993.
He also served as president of Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
In 2008, Dar briefly assumed the duties of federal finance minister but resigned from the position after PML-N decided to part ways with the Ppp-led coalition government at the Centre.
Dar also served as the finance minister for the then-prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s government in 2013.
He was reappointed as the finance minister of Pakistan from September 2022 till the end of the coalition government’s tenure in August 2023.
Despite being the PML-N’S go-to finance expert for decades, he was surprisingly made the minister of foreign affairs when Shahbaz Sharif picked his new cabinet in March of this year, with his preferred finance portfolio going to Muhammad Aurangzeb.
Meanwhile, former prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and ex-leader of the Pakistan Muslim League-nawaz (PML-N), who is working to form his own party, has claimed that he opposed its opting for “power politics at all costs.”
He told a TV channel that he did not agree with it politics the PML-N had chosen in 2022.
He said that he was no more a member of the ruling party, adding that he had resigned from it.
Abbasi had stepped down from the party office soon after the appointment of Maryam Nawaz as senior vice president and chief organiser last year.
He said that he had informed the PML-N leadership a year ago that he would not contest the Feb.8 general elections from the PML-N platform.
“I did not attend any PML-N meeting after tendering resignation from the party.”
The former premier said that he was a member of the “Muslim League” even before the establishment of the PML-N.
He claimed that he never approached the establishment.
“We contested the 2002 elections against the establishment,” he added.
Abbasi also expressed ignorance over reports that PML-N supremo Nawaz Sharif went abroad and then returned to the country under any deal.
Earlier this month, Abbasi, who served as the country’s prime minister from August 2017 to May 2018, approached the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) for the registration of a new political party.
He submitted relevant documents to the poll organising authority’s office for the registration of a new political party.
He had then said he provided relevant documents to the ECP for his new political party which would be registered under the Elections Act 2017.
He had also announced that he would take part in next elections under the banner of his new party.