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PML-Q candidate likely to be Pakistani prime minister

K J M Varma in Islamabad

Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali of pro-Musharraf Pakistan Muslim League--Qaid-e-Azam is likely to be elected by Parliament on Thursday as the country's first prime minister on Thursday after the 1999 coup, if the party's victory in the elections for speaker and deputy speaker is any indication.

The PML-Q, which has emerged as the largest single party in the October 10 elections with 118 seats, has named Jamali, former Baluchistan chief minister, as its prime ministerial candidate.

It also has the support of 10 members of former premier Benazir Bhutto's PPP, who broke away from the party.

Apparently buoyed by the victory of PML-Q's candidate for the posts of the speaker and deputy speaker on Tuesday, President Pervez Musharraf announced that the new National Assembly will elect a prime minister on Thursday.

A one-sentence notification by the National Assembly secretariat issued said the 334-member House would meet 'for the purpose of ascertainment of the member who commands the confidence of the majority of the members of the assembly'.

Significantly the 'ascertainment' or election of the prime minister would be done by show of hands by the House members and not by secret ballot as was in the case of elections for the speaker and deputy speaker.

The six-party alliance of hardline Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal), which on Wednesday had said it would sit in the opposition after the defeat of its candidate Liaqat Baloch in the speakership election, fielded Maulana Fazlur Rehman for the post of the prime minister.

Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples' Party has also decided to contest, but has not named its candidate so far.

The PML-Q is likely to clinch the post as its candidates Chaudhary Amir Hussain and Sardar Yacub, who contested for the posts of speaker and deputy speaker respectively, won with comfortable majority in a three cornered contest.

But both the elections proved that the PML-Q has not yet got the minimum bare majority required to form a government. Hussain had got 167 votes, while Yacub won the deputy speakership with only 163 votes.

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