Yousaf Raza Gillani, who was Speaker of Parliament in Pakistan in the 1990s under the then Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, is expected to be sworn into office as prime minister on Tuesday. Gillani has been reportedly handpicked by Asif Ali Zardari, the late Benazir Bhutto’s husband, who appears to have his own ambition to capture that chair as early as possible.
(The Zardari’s PPP party has agreed to form a coalition government with the party of ex-PM Nawaz Sharif, who was ousted by Musharraf in a coup in 1999, and other smaller groups who trounced the US-backed president’s allies in elections.)
Zardari is handicapped at the moment because he (the leader of the main party in the new Pakistan government) did not contest in the recently held Parliamentary elections. So until Zardari gets elected, probably in a few months, he has chosen a low profile politician for the prime ministerial chair and elbowed out the prominent candidates in the race.
According to the NYT: “Mr. Zardari chose Mr. Gillani over Makhdoom Amin Fahim, a much better-known party leader who ran the Pakistani Peoples Party during Ms. Bhutto’s exile abroad. He would probably have been much harder to dislodge as prime minister when Mr. Zardari was ready to take over.
“The selection of Mr. Gillani, 55, was announced after a bruising internal party fight in which Mr. Zardari, Ms. Bhutto’s widower, seemed determined to keep open the option of running for Parliament soon so he could rise to the prime minister post.
“Mr. Gillani, a journalism graduate from Punjab University in Lahore, has spent most of his life in politics, first in the Pakistan Muslim League-N, and then in the more populist Pakistan Peoples Party. He was minister with portfolios including railways, housing and environment.
“He served four and a half years in prison on charges of having put too many people on the payroll when he was Assembly speaker, though he was not convicted, said his brother, Ahmed Mujtaba Gillani. Some of his prison term, which ended in 2005, coincided with Mr. Zardari’s 11 years in prison on corruption charges.
“On Wednesday, the new coalition elected a parliamentary speaker, Fahmida Mirza, by the two-thirds majority needed for an impeachment vote. Ms. Mirza, the wife of Zulfikar Mirza, one of Mr. Zardari’s close confidants, is the first woman to be elected speaker in Pakistan.”
Here’s the BBC profile of Yousaf Raza Gillani…please click here
Swaraaj Chauhan describes his two-decade-long stint as a full-time journalist as eventful, purposeful, and full of joy and excitement. In 1993 he could foresee a different work culture appearing on the horizon, and decided to devote full time to teaching journalism (also, partly, with a desire to give back to the community from where he had enriched himself so much.)
Alongside, he worked for about a year in 1993 for the US State Department’s SPAN magazine, a nearly five-decade-old art and culture monthly magazine promoting US-India relations. It gave him an excellent opportunity to learn about things American, plus the pleasure of playing tennis in the lavish American embassy compound in the heart of New Delhi.
In !995 he joined WWF-India as a full-time media and environment education consultant and worked there for five years travelling a great deal, including to Husum in Germany as a part of the international team to formulate WWF’s Eco-tourism policy.
He taught journalism to honors students in a college affiliated to the University of Delhi, as also at the prestigious Indian Institute of Mass Communication where he lectured on “Development Journalism” to mid-career journalists/Information officers from the SAARC, African, East European and Latin American countries, for eight years.
In 2004 the BBC World Service Trust (BBC WST) selected him as a Trainer/Mentor for India under a European Union project. In 2008/09 He completed another European Union-funded project for the BBC WST related to Disaster Management and media coverage in two eastern States in India — West Bengal and Orissa.
Last year, he spent a couple of months in Australia and enjoyed trekking, and also taught for a while at the University of South Australia.
Recently, he was appointed as a Member of the Board of Studies at Chitkara University in Chandigarh, a beautiful city in North India designed by the famous Swiss/French architect Le Corbusier. He also teaches undergraduate and postgraduate students there.
He loves trekking, especially in the hills, and never misses an opportunity to play a game of tennis. The Western and Indian classical music are always within his reach for instant relaxation.
And last, but not least, is his firm belief in the power of the positive thought to heal oneself and others.