Former prime minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali passed away at a hospital in Rawalpindi at the age of 76 on Wednesday evening, his relative Senator Sana Jamali confirmed. Jamali, who served as the premier from November 2002 until June 2004, was shifted to the Armed Forces Institute of Cardiology & National Institute of Heart Diseases (AFIC-NIHD) in Rawalpindi after suffering a heart attack last week.
For the last few days, he had been put on a ventilator in the Critical Care Unit of the hospital.The details of his funeral have not been issued as yet.
Jamali, the country’s first and only elected prime minister from Balochistan, had served during the military regime of Gen Pervez Musharraf. However, Gen Musharraf sought his resignation in 2004 and he was replaced by Shaukat Aziz.
He won the 2013 general elections as an independent, but later joined the PML-N and used to sit on the treasury benches in the previous assembly.
The PML-N leadership had issued a show-cause notice to Jamali in October 2017 when he did not vote in line with the party’s policy on the bill allowing Nawaz Sharif to assume the office of the party president despite his disqualification by the Supreme Court in the Panama Papers case.
Jamali resigned from the National Assembly only days before the completion of the assembly’s term, citing health concerns.
He was opposed to the PML-N policy of having confrontation with the judiciary Army Chief Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa expressed “heartfelt condolences” on the former premier’s demise. “May Allah bless his soul & give strength to the bereaved family to bear this irreparable loss,” an Inter-Services Public Relations tweet quoted him as saying.
Source: dawn.com
