Mamnoon Hussain of PML-N, 73-year-old businessman from Karachi and ex-governor Sindh, has been elected as 12th President of Pakistan. Mamnoon Hussain won easily in Punjab, Sindh and Balochistan, though he lost in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, where PTI has the majority. He won 277 out of 311 votes in the upper and lower houses of parliament to emerge victorious. Mamnoon Hussain has secured 432 electoral votes from parliament and provincial assemblies against Justice (retd) Wajihuddin Ahmed who secured 77 electoral votes.
Nearly 200 legislators from the PPP and its allies – Awami National Party, Balochistan National Party-Awami and Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid – boycotted the Presidential elections. Lawmakers from the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, Pakistan Muslim League-Functional, Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party, National Party, Qaumi Wattan Party, Pakistan Muslim League-Zia and PML-Q’s Balochistan chapter voted for Mamnoon Hussain. The only exception, however, was the Awami Muslim League. Its chief and only legislator Sheikh Rashid Ahmed made a commitment to the PTI hours before the election that he would vote for Wajihuddin. But surprisingly, he reneged and boycotted the vote at the eleventh hour.
A profile of Mamnoon Hussain, President of Pakistan:
Born on December 23, 1940 in Agra, Mamnoon Hussain shifted to Karachi after partition with his father Azhar Hussain and other family members. Schooled in traditional religious education, he completed his matriculation in 1958 and was awarded a B.Com Honors degree from the Government College of Commerce. Subsequently, he attended the prestigious Institute of Business Administration (IBA) in Karachi, from where he graduated in 1965.
In 1970, he married the daughter of the owner of one of Karachi’s most famous bakeries, Fresco. He has three sons who are associated with the banking industry and business. Mamnoon Hussain had a cloth shop at Bolton Market. Till 1999, he lived at ground floor of the Ghayan Singh Building on Tirath Singh Lalwani Road, at the back of Allahwala market. Hussain, who has remained associated with the Muslim League from the beginning, was introduced to formal politics by his close friend and mentor Abdul Khaliq Allahwala, a former member of the National Assembly in the 1960s. Quickly making a mark in the League, Hussain rose to become joint secretary of the party in 1967.
In 1999, he was elected as the president of the Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industries (KCCI) and was soon selected by Nawaz Sharif to become governor of Sindh in June 1999. However, Mamnoon Hussain’s stint as governor ended abruptly after less than six months, when the Nawaz government was overthrown by the then military chief Pervez Musharraf. During his political career, Mamnoon Hussain has held important portfolios in his party. He remained the provincial general secretary of PML-N and has also served as party’s acting provincial president of Sindh chapter. He was PML-N’s central senior vice president and has also served as an adviser to Sindh’s ex-chief minister, Liaquat Ali Jatoi.