As the victors of Monday’s Pakistani elections continued to discuss who would lead their coalition in parliament, party insiders tell NEWSWEEK that the choice will most likely be veteran politician Makhdoom Amin Fahim. "It's almost a done deal," says an official from the Pakistan People's Party who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the information. The PPP, led by former prime minister Benazir Bhutto until her assassination in late December, won the most seats in the national assembly and thus has the prerogative to name the premier. Another former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, whose party ran second, has agreed to support the choice.
Fahim, 68, almost became prime minister in 2002. Only his loyalty to Bhutto kept him from running the government. Back then Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf was scrambling to find coalition partners to bolster his own jerry-built party. He offered the top job to Fahim, who then as now was vice chairman of the PPP, but only under the condition that Fahim would not take direction from Bhutto, who was in exile. Fahim flatly refused. During her nine long years abroad, Bhutto knew she could rely on her fellow landowner from southern Sindh Province to be a trusted adviser and executor of her plans on the ground. Her widower, Asif Ali Zardari, who is now the PPP's co-chairman, is counting on the same fidelity.
Fahim is renowned for his complete lack of charisma. But he has a reputation for being able to work with others and get things done. And most important for both Zardari and Sharif, Fahim is not personally ambitious. If he were he would have succumbed to the many offers and veiled threats over the years to join Musharraf. Fahim says he has no regrets. He is a complex, well-rounded man of seemingly contradictory traits. The scion of a landed feudal family, his father was a Sufi spiritual leader (the "pir of Hala") and one of the founders in 1969 of the populist PPP, along with Bhutto's father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Although a landed gentleman and a locally venerated "pir," or Sufi saint (an inherited mantle), Fahim is a totally secular, moderate, pragmatic social democrat as well as a mystic poet. He has a squeaky-clean reputation, which is unusual for a Pakistani politician...
Full story@ http://www.newsweek.com/id/114524
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