Former president of Pakistan Asif Ali Zardari has been notified as President of Pakistan Peoples’ Party Parliamentarians (PPP-P), it has been learnt reliably.
PPP-P Secretary General Raja Pervaiz Ashraf has issued the notification which has been sent to the Election Commission of Pakistan to fulfil a legal requirement.
PPP’s General Secretary, Sardar Latif Khosa confirmed the development yesterday while talking to The Nation.
The office of president in the PPP-P fell vacant last month after the demise of Makhdum Amin Fahim who held this office for over 13 years. He was the first head of this party created in 2002 under a legal compulsion necessitated as a result of promulgation of Political Parties Order 2002 by General Pervaiz Musharraf.
Earlier, the central executive committee of the PPP-P which met on December 27 last year had recommended Zardari’s name for the vacant slot. Some party men had opposed the move but majority of the CEC members voted in his favour.
Asked how could a person keep two offices simultaneously in two political parties separately registered with the ECP, Khosa replied that the office of co-chairman was not a formal office. “This office is given by the party and is not included in the list of party office bearers which lies with the ECP”, he said, adding that Asif Zardari was not holding any office in the PPP since the legal bar imposed on him by the Lahore High Court when he was the president of Pakistan.
“We call Bilawal as PPP chairman and Asif Zardari as co-chairman. But legally speaking, neither of the two offices exits on paper submitted with the ECP. Bilawal is in fact Patron-in-Chief of the PPP in the official documents while Zardari does not hold any office in the party”, he further explained.