Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif was elected as the PML-N president unopposed on Tuesday after six years, a development that was widely expected after he was acquitted last year in all the graft cases against him.
Earlier today, while sharing a video of preparations for the party’s General Council meeting, the PML-N had said: “Lion is returning to take his rightful place at the top.”
The PML-N supremo has returned to the party’s helm six years after he lost the party president’s office due to a Supreme Court decision in the Panama Papers case.
The intra-party elections were held during the party’s general council meeting, which was held in Lahore. As many as 11 party members had received the nomination papers for the top slot.
Earlier, the PML-N had announced convening the meeting on May 11 for the purpose but it was postponed to coincide with the celebration of 26 years of Pakistan becoming a nuclear power.
Addressing a press conference, PML-N Punjab President Rana Sanaullah — also the political aide of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif — had hinted that Nawaz would be elected without a contest.
When asked if there was any other candidate against the elder Sharif, he said if any party member wanted to contest against him, they should come forward. When asked why the party did not adopt a democratic process to vote for a new president, Sanaullah had said: “PML [Pakistan Muslim League] was a ‘londi’ (servant) of power corridors. It was Nawaz Sharif who made it a party of the public.”
Nawaz Sharif was removed as the party president in 2018 after a Supreme Court bench headed by then-chief justice Mian Saqib Nisar ruled that an individual disqualified under Articles 62 and 63 of the Constitution cannot serve as the head of a political party.
Only a few months before this decision, he had been disqualified for life by the apex court in the Panama Papers-related corruption cases.
The indication of Nawaz retaking the helm was given last month when the members of the PML-N Punjab chapter passed a resolution urging him to lead the party since he had been acquitted in all corruption cases after his arrival from London in October last year.