Finance chief elected Pakistan PM

Pakistan’s parliament elected Shaukat Aziz, former finance minister and close ally of President General Pervez Musharraf, as prime minister today amid an opposition boycott of the vote.

Aziz received 191 votes in the 342-seat National Assembly, or lower house in Islamabad.

Opposition contender, Javed Hashmi, who is serving a 23-year jail term for attempting to instigate an army rebellion against Musharraf, failed to win any votes.

Opposition MPs abstained from voting after the house speaker rejected a request for him to be temporarily freed to attend the election.

“I declare Mr Shaukat Aziz as the member who controls the confidence of the majority of the members of the National Assembly,” Chaudhry Amir Hussain, speaker of the National Assembly, told MPs.

Aziz replaces caretaker prime minister Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, who stepped down this week after only two months in office.

Aziz, 55, had been widely expected to win the vote, and is set to take the oath of office tomorrow.

Opposition groups have criticised political manoeuvring to get Aziz elected as an affront to democracy, and proof that Musharraf – who took power in a coup in 1999 – is still the sole controlling force in politics.