Pakistan’s lawmakers elected Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of Pakistan’s slain first female premier Benazir Bhutto, on Saturday as the country’s president for the second time.
Zardari will take oath as the president on Sunday. Supreme Court Chief Justice Qazi Faez Isa will administer the oath at a ceremony at the Aiwan-e-Sadr.
Zardari defeated Mahmood Khan Achakzai, who was sponsored by the Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC) comprising the Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI) lawmakers, with a big margin.
The Jamiat Ulema-e-Islami-Fazl (JUI-F), Jamaat-e-Islami and Grand Democratic Alliance boycotted the presidential election.
PM Shahbaz Sharif and Asif Ali Zardari (R) cast their ballots to vote during the presidential election in Islamabad. AFP
Zardari bagged 411 votes and Achakzai 181 votes in the electoral college. The PPP leader clinched 255 electoral votes from the parliament — Senate and National Assembly — while he received 156 electoral votes from the provincial assemblies.
The votes got by each candidate from a provincial assembly were converted into the electoral votes. Every provincial legislature had 65 votes in the electoral college.
Achakzai bagged 91 votes in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) assembly while Zardari managed to get 17 votes. A total of 109 votes were cast in this assembly. Zardari received 151 votes from the Sindh assembly while Achakzai clinched just nine votes, according to unofficial results.
Earlier in the day, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari said Asif Ali Zardari, who is a presidential candidate, will once again become president. In a post on X, Bilawal said, “Sardar bana that Zardari, phir sadar banega Zardari. Dam mast Qalandar Zardari.”
Initially a background character as Benazir Bhutto’s consort, Zardari was stained by a bevy of corruption and other allegations, including absurd kidnapping plots and taking kickbacks lavished on hoards of jewellery.
A sympathy vote propelled him to office when his wife was assassinated in a 2007 bomb and gun attack.
Between 2008 and 2013, he ushered in constitutional reforms rolling back presidential powers, and the 68-year-old’s second term will see him steer a largely ceremonial office.
He has spent more than 11 years in jail, a long time even by the standards of Pakistani politicians, with a wheeler-dealer’s talent for bouncing back after scandals.
Back in 2009, the New York Times said he had a knack for “artful dodging” — “maneuvering himself out of the tight spots he gets himself into”.
Newly sworn-in lawmakers were set to vote him in under the terms of a coalition deal brokered after February 8 elections marred by rigging claims.
Under that deal, Zardari’s Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) will take the presidency, while its historic rivals the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party secured the prime minister’s position for Shehbaz Sharif, who was officially sworn in on Monday.
Zardari was born in 1955 into a land-owning family from the southern province of Sindh. “As a child, I was spoilt by my parents as an only son,” he said in a 2000 interview with the Guardian newspaper. “They indulged my every whim.”
He expressed only limited political ambitions as a young man — losing a 1983 local government election.
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