A former Pakistani parliamentary speaker who spent half the last decade in jail, Yousuf Raza Gillani is one of the most loyal followers of assassinated former premier Benazir Bhutto.
Gillani, a 58-year-old father-of-five, was nominated by Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party (PPP) on Saturday night to be the crisis-hit country's next prime minister after a month of torturous deliberations. Gillani only emerged as the frontrunner last week, but was helped by his closeness to Bhutto's widower Asif Ali Zardari, who was in jail at the same time as him under the regime of President Pervez Musharraf.
Party insiders and friends said he was from a less elitist background than other PPP figures and would likely be a safe pair of hands in a looming showdown between Musharraf and a hostile incoming government.
Close friend Khawaja Adnan, who was in Rawalpindi's harsh Adiala Jail at the same time as Gillani, said that despite his time behind bars he would not necessarily hold a grudge against Musharraf. "Yousuf Raza Gillani is a non-vindictive politician who firmly believes in the superiority of the party," Adnan told AFP.
"He is a passionate Pakistani and he has suffered for the restoration of democracy in the country. He is a very humble man," Adnan added. The question remains however whether Gillani is just a seat-warmer for Zardari, who was not eligible to be premier because he is not an MP, but who may decide to fight a by-election in May and take over the post.
Political analyst and newspaper columnist Shafqat Mahmood said Gillani was an experienced politician who would abide by Zardari's wishes. "He has won his political spurs by spending more than five years in jail during Musharraf's dictatorship," Mahmood told AFP.
"He will be the kind of figure who will be acceptable to most people because he is a soft person. As far as the party unity is concerned, it will be in the domain of Mr Zardari." Gillani was born in 1950 into a family with a long heritage as guardians of Islamic shrines in the central city of Multan, known in Pakistan as the "City of Saints."
His father was an MP in the 1950s and had modest landholdings, but party officials said they were not in the same league as other PPP leaders including the Bhuttos and Gillani's main rival for the PM post, Makhdoom Amin Fahim.
He took a masters degree in journalism and entered politics in the 1980s, when he was part of a cabinet under the military dictator Zia-ul-Haq, who had Bhutto's father hanged in 1979.
But he quit the administration in 1988 to join the PPP, defeating future prime minister Nawaz Sharif in elections that year after Zia's death in a mysterious air crash.
Bhutto appointed Gillani as a minister for health and then for housing in her first government from 1988 to 1990. He was then speaker from 1993 to 1996 in Bhutto's second government. But after Musharraf grabbed power in a military coup in 1999 Gillani was targeted in an anti-corruption crackdown.
He was charged with granting 350 government jobs to people without following correct procedures and for excessive use of telephones and cars as speaker, and spent five years in jail.
The PPP said the charges against Gillani and other members including Zardari were politically motivated. All charges against holders of public office from that time were wiped out under an amnesty deal that allowed Bhutto to return from self-imposed exile in October last year.
Bhutto was assassinated in December, leaving a vacuum at the head of her party which Gillani has now been chosen to fill. Pakistan's parliament is now set to elect the premier on Monday, with Gillani a near certainty thanks to the majority the PPP and its coalition partners hold.
But one final hurdle remains - his only son is set to marry in the southern city of Karachi on the same day, leaving him facing a tough first day on the job.
Comments
Comments are closed.