Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar was surprisingly appointed as the country’s Deputy Prime Minister on Sunday.
Dar, 73, a chartered accountant and veteran politician, belongs to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party. According to a notification issued by the Cabinet Department, the appointment was made by Prime Minister Sharif “with immediate effect and until further orders”.
The announcement was made while Prime Minister Sharif and Foreign Minister Dar were away in Saudi Arabia to attend World Economic Forum discussions.
It wasn’t clear what specific duties Dar would fulfill as deputy prime minister, as traditionally, all powers are concentrated in the prime minister, who is the chief executive of the country.
Dar is considered close to former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif due to the marital ties between the two families as his son is the elder Sharif’s son-in-law.
He served as finance minister in two previous governments. Considered the party’s answer to all economic woes, he served as finance minister for the fourth and final time in the previous coalition government of the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM in which he ‘wasn’t upto the expectations.’
Despite being the party’s finance expert for decades, he surprisingly became foreign minister when Prime Minister Sharif formed his cabinet in March.
Dar was tipped to become Speaker of the Senate, the upper house of parliament, but lost the race last month after the PML-N colluded with former foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP)-led party to win. their support for the coalition government.
The party agreed to give the president and chairman a PPP senate seat, leaving Dar with no choice but to settle for some other role in the government.
The PML-N and PPP agreed on a power-sharing deal to form a coalition government, although former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan-backed independent Tehreek-e-Insaf won a majority of seats in the 266-member National Assembly.
It is not the first time that a deputy prime minister has been appointed. Chaudhry Parvez Elahi served as Deputy Prime Minister during the tenure of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) from 25 June 2012 to 29 June 2013. His role during that time was mostly symbolic as he was rewarded by the then President Asif Ali Zardari for supporting the PPP government.
Elahi is currently the president of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf and is in jail on corruption charges.
