Daily Times

Lahore: The parliamentary party of Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) has nominated Hamza Shehbaz, son of PML-N president Shehbaz Sharif, as its candidate for the Chief Minister’s slot in the province. The younger Sharif will also be the parliamentary leader of PML-N in the Punjab Assembly.

Former Punjab law minister and newly-elected MNA from Faisalabad, Rana Sanaullah Khan made the announcement on Monday, after a meeting of the parliamentary party in Lahore.

The announcement puts to rest media reports about the apparent opposition of PML-N’s supreme leader Nawaz Sharif and his daughter Maryam Nawaz to Hamza’s nomination for the Punjab CM’s slot. According to those reports, the two jailed leaders wanted someone else in the party for the coveted office since Hamza’s father Shehbaz Sharif had already been named as the joint candidate of the opposition for the Leader of the House in the National Assembly.

Hamza, who won on both national and provincial assembly seats he contested from Lahore, has already vacated his NA seat to represent the party in the Punjab Assembly. He entered parliamentary politics in 2008 by winning a NA seat from Lahore [he retained the seat in 2013 and 2018 elections]. However, he had been looking after party affairs in Punjab even before that, since he was the only member of the Sharif family allowed to stay in the country while the rest were forced into exile during Musharraf’s dictatorship.

Speaking to the media after making the announcement on Monday, Sanaullah said, “We’ll work rigorously to form our government in the Punjab as we are in contact with the Pakistan Peoples Party who has seven seats in the House.”

He said Nawaz Sharif had asked the party to refrain from horse trading, a phrase widely used to refer to buying and selling of political loyalties, but he did not prevent it from trying to form government in the Punjab. He said PML-N was the single largest party in the province after July 25 elections, but PTI was undermining the party’s mandate by wooing independent candidates. Referring to PTI leader Jahagir Tareen’s meetings with independent candidates, he said, “A disqualified politician of PTI has been busy in horse-trading as he himself claims that he is in continuous contact with PML-N MPAs.”

Sanaullah said the PML-N would announce its candidate for the office of deputy speaker in a day or two.

For the speaker’s office in Punjab, the PML-N nominated senior parliamentarian from Gujranwala, Chaudhry Muhammad Iqbal Gujjar, who became an MPA for the eighth time in this election.

Gujjar started his political career as the chairman of a union council, and very soon got elevated to a ministry in the province when he became Minister for Revenue in the 1985 cabinet of Nawaz Sharif. Gujjar became provincial minister many times after winning MPA elections in 1988, 1990, 1993, 1997, 2002, and 2013.

Published in Daily Times, August 14^th 2018.