Islamabad/Beijing, March 10: Asif Ali Zardari on Sunday took oath as Pakistan’s 14th President, a day after the veteran politician was overwhelmingly elected as the next head of state.
Chief Justice of Pakistan Qazi Faez Isa administered the oath to the 68-year-old Zardari at Aiwan-e-Sadr, the Presidential Palace.
Zardari will replace Dr Arif Alvi, who stayed in office for five more months despite completing his five-year term in September 2023.
The swearing-in ceremony was attended by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, all three service chiefs, senior officials and diplomats.
Zardari, Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) co-chairman, the joint candidate of the ruling alliance, was elected as the country’s president for the second time on Saturday after he defeated PTI-backed Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC) candidate Mahmood Khan Achakzai by a huge margin.
He secured 411 electoral votes in Parliament and all four provincial assemblies with the backing of allied parties – mainly Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P).
His rival, Achakzai bagged 181 votes as he was only able to secure the majority of votes in the PTI-backed SIC-dominated Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly.
This is the second time Zardari has won the presidency. He earlier served as the 11th president of Pakistan from 2008 to 2013 and has been a member of the National Assembly of Pakistan since August 2018.
Born in 1955, Zardari was brought up and educated in Karachi. He was married to Pakistan’s former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s daughter, Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated in December 2007.
Xi Jinping greets Zardari
Chinese President Xi Jinping on Sunday congratulated Zardari on his election as the Pakistan President, saying that the “iron-clad” friendship between the two countries is a “choice of history” and the strategic significance of their ties has become more prominent considering the current changes in the world.
In his message to Zardari, Xi said “China and Pakistan are good neighbours, good friends, good partners and good brothers, adding that the two countries’ iron-clad friendship is a choice of history and a precious treasure of the two peoples.” Xi said that “the two countries have in recent years maintained close high-level exchanges, supported each other on issues concerning their respective core interests and major concerns, achieved fruitful results in the construction of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and maintained a high level of development of bilateral relations,” state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
India has objected to China over the USD 60 billion CPEC connecting China’s Xinjiang with Gwadar port in Balochistan as it is being laid through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK).
Xi in his message said that as the world is confronted with accelerated changes unseen in a century, the strategic significance of China-Pakistan relations has become more prominent.
Xi said he highly regards the development of China-Pakistan relations, and is ready to work with President Zardari to carry forward the traditional friendship between China and Pakistan, advance practical cooperation in various fields, push for greater development of China-Pakistan all-weather strategic cooperative partnership, accelerate the building of an even closer China-Pakistan community with a shared future in the new era, to better benefit the two peoples.
PTI’s Omar Ayub named leader of opposition
Jailed former prime minister Imran Khan’s PTI and the Sunni Ittehad Council have jointly nominated his party leader Omar Ayub Khan as the leader of the opposition in Pakistan’s National Assembly.
The PTI-SIC formalised the nomination by submitting his documents to the office of National Assembly Speaker Sardar Ayaz Sadiq on Saturday, the Dawn newspaper said on Sunday.
Incidentally, Omar Ayub Khan was also the joint candidate who lost to Shehbaz Sharif in the prime ministerial election last week. (PTI)
