Source: ABC News

Front-Runners to Become Pakistan’s New Prime Minister

The party of assassinated opposition leader Benazir Bhutto is expected to nominate one of the following candidates to become Pakistan’s next prime minister:

MAKHDOOM AMIN FAHIM: The veteran politician is vice chairman of Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party and the favorite to lead the new government. His father helped Bhutto’s father found the party in 1967. The 66-year-old Fahim draws extra prestige from his claim of descent from a renowned religious leader. Like Bhutto, he hails from the southern province of Sindh.

YOUSAF RAZA GILANI: A former speaker of the national assembly who was another close Bhutto aide, Gilani is from a landowning family in Punjab province, Pakistan’s political heartland. In 2005, Gillani was released from four years in jail over allegations that he abused his authority as speaker.

CHAUDHRY AHMED MUKHTAR: Bhutto’s former commerce minister, Muhktar defeated Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, a close ally of President Pervez Musharraf and head of his former ruling party, to win a seat from Punjab in the Feb. 18 parliamentary vote. Mukhtar, 61, hails from a wealthy industrial family. He was jailed on corruption charges after Musharraf seized power in a 1999 coup but was later acquitted and freed.

MAKHDOOM SHAH MAHMOOD QURESHI: The scion of a powerful political family in the Punjabi city of Multan, Qureshi was the party’s losing candidate for prime minister in 2002. Suave and soft-spoken, Qureshi, 52, graduated from Britain’s Cambridge University with degrees in law and politics.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

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Tags: Candidates, Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar, Makhdoom Amin Fahim, Makhdoom Shah, PM, PPP, Yousaf Raza Gilani