Source: Reuters

Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf swore in ministers on Monday for a coalition government that could try to force his resignation.

Here are short profiles of leading members of the cabinet;

Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani

– Gilani, 55, hails from a prominent family from southern Punjab and entered politics in the 1980s in support of the then military dictator, President Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq. He later joined Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party, and was Speaker of the National Assembly from 1993 to 1997.

– After Musharraf came to power, Gilani spent nearly five years in jail before being released in 2006. He was accused of promoting people out of turn as assembly speaker, but was never convicted.

Finance Minister Ishaq Dar

– Dar was finance minister in Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s government at the time of the military coup that brought General Musharraf to power in 1999. Dar was jailed for two years.

– An accountant by training, Dar, 60, was appointed commerce minister in 1997 and promoted to finance minister a year later. Both Sharif governments in the 1990s were regarded as pro-business, but it ended in tears with an economic crisis triggered by sanctions imposed after Pakistan conducted nuclear tests in 1998.

Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi

– The 52-year-old Qureshi is president of the Punjab chapter of Pakistan People’s Party (PPP).

– He belongs to a land-owning family, graduated from Britain’s Cambridge University, and switched from Sharif’s party to Bhutto’s in the mid-1990s.

– He has served as Finance Minister of Punjab, the richest and most populous of Pakistan’s four provinces, in 1990-1993.

Defense Minister, Ahmed Mukhtar

– A senior PPP leader, Mukhtar defeated president of the pro-Musharraf Pakistan Muslim League, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, in the February 18 polls.

– An industrialist, Mukhtar served as commerce minister in Bhutto’s second government in the mid-1990s.

Information Minister, Sherry Rehman

– A journalist by profession, and an active women rights advocate, Rehman, 47, was one of Bhutto’s closest aides.

– Her seat in the National Assembly is one of those reserved for women and allocated to the PPP in Karachi. She was also a member of the previous assembly.

– Rehman studied art, history and politics at Smith College in the United States and Britain’s University of Sussex.

Rehman Malik, Advisor to the Prime Minister on Interior and Narcotics

– Malik is an unelected member of the cabinet, but the position of advisor has the status of cabinet minister. He was Bhutto’s security advisor prior to her assassination on December 27.

– A civil servant, Malik held several posts, notably in the Interior Ministry. His last assignment was as a director general of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) in Bhutto’s second government. He was suspended and arrested on the charges of corruption following the dismissal of the government in 1996. Nawaz Sharif later fired him and Malik fled to London in 1999.

(Writing by Augustine Anthony; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore and Sanjeev Miglani)

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Tags: Ahmed Mukhtar, Coalition Government, Defense Minister, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Information Minister, President Pervez Musharraf, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, Sherry Rehman