Nawaz Shareef & Fazal ur Rehman Press Conference 25 Feb 13 Express News

Nawaz Sharif:
Mian Muhammad Nawaz Sharif (Urdu: نواز شریف‎, pronounced [nəˈʋəz ʃaːriːf]; born 25 December 1949[1]) is a major politician, steel mill industrialist and business magnate, serving as the 12th Prime Minister of Pakistan in two non-consecutive terms from November 1990 to July 1993, and from February 1997 until the military coup d’état staged to end his government on 12 October 1999. He is currently President of Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N), one of Pakistan’s major national and largest conservative political party. As the owner of Unit Group, a leading steel mill conglomerate, he is also one of the country’s wealthiest industrialists.

Sharif rose to political and public prominence as a member of General Zia-ul-Haq’s military regime in the 1980s.N Supported by then-Governor of Punjab General Ghulam Jilani Khan, Sharif was appointed the province’s Chief Minister by Zia in 1985. After Zia’s death and Benazir Bhutto’s being elected Prime Minister in 1988, Sharif emerged as the primary opposition leader from the conservative Pakistan Muslim League and led the right-wing conservative alliance, IDA against Benazir Bhutto. When Benazir was dismissed by President Ghulam Ishaq Khan in 1990 on corruption charges, Sharif secure the nomination and successfully compaigned for the office of Prime Minister. Upon being elected, Sharif launched privatisation and economic liberalisation policy measure programs to allievate the national economy, deregulazing the major industries and strenghthening the private-sector of the country. In 1993, Sharif survived a serious constitutional crises when President Ghulam Ishaq attempted to dismiss Sharif on similar charges, but Sharif successfully challenged the decision in the Supreme Court. Eventually, both men were ultimately persuaded to step down and break the gridlock in 1993 by then-chief of army staff Abdul Waheed Kakar and chairman joint chiefs general Shamim Alam Khan.

Serving as the Leader of the Opposition during Benazir’s second tenure, Sharif was again re-elected to Prime Minister with a historic two-thirds majority in parliament, after Benazir was again dismissed by her own hand-picked President Farooq Leghari. In office, Sharif replaced Leghari with Rafiq Tarar as President, then stripped the Presidency of its powers by passing the Thirteenth Amendment. He also notably ordered Pakistan’s first nuclear tests in response to neighbouring India’s second nuclear tests, as part of his tit-for-tat policy, a termed he coined thereafter.When Western countries suspended foreign aid, Sharif responded by freezing the foreign currency reserves to prevent further capital flight, but this only worsened economic conditions.

With rising unemployment and record foreign debt, Sharif’s second term also saw tussles with the judiciary and unified armed forces. After Sharif was summoned for contempt by the Supreme Court in 1997, his party’s workers attacked the supreme court building and Chief Justice Syed Sajjad Ali Shah. Sharif also fell out with the chief of army staff general Jehangir Karamat and controversially replaced him with Pervez Musharraf in 1998, but after Pakistan’s haphazard performance in the Kargil War, relations between Sharif and armed forces deteriorated.

Furthermore, the relations with chief of naval staff admiral Fasih Bokhari and chief of air staff air chief marshal PQ Mehdi further strained and eventually turned into a covert hostility, on the issue involving Musharraf’s promotion to chairman join chiefs and Kargil war. Finally, on October 1999, Sharif made an attempted to relieve Musharraf from his command on 12 October 1999, the armed instead ousted Sharif’s government, exiling him to Saudi Arabia. Sharif returned in 2007, and his party contested general elections a year later.He successfully called for Musharraf’s impeachment and the reinstatement of Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry. The PML-N now forms the provincial government in Punjab under Sharif’s brother Shahbaz, and is Pakistan’s main opposition party.

Fazal ur Rehman:
Maulana Fazal-ur-Rahman( مولانا فضل الرحمٰن ), (born on June 19, 1953 in Abdul Khel, Dera Ismail Khan) is a Pakistani politician[1] and cleric, currently serving as the General Secretary and the President of the Assembly of Islamic Clerics (F), and an extremely important ally of Prime minister Yousaf Raza Gillani’s led cabinet government. Rose to national politics in 1988, Rahman has been a traditionally strong ally of Benazir Bhutto since 1988 and considered to be influenced and assisted Benazir Bhutto to to help the regime of Taliban after which she helped established the Taliban’s Afghanistan in 1996.

After Benazir Bhutto departed from Pakistan 1998, Rahman acted as interim Leader of the Opposition until 1999. After the 2002 elections, Rahman took the office of Leader of the Opposition where he worked with Benazir Bhutto to tackle down the government of General Pervez Musharraf and Prime minister Shaukat Aziz. Since the 2008 parliamentary elections, Rahman has been an integral personality in Yousaf Raza Gillani’s led cabinet government, and has extremely deep influence on Asif Ali Zardari’s and Gillani’s domestic policies on War on Terror.

Background
Moulana Fazal Ur Rehman inherited from his father public support in their native area of Dera Ismail Khan. Of the four general elections that Fazl ur-Rahman contested since 1988 from his national assembly constituency, NA-18, he won two with convincing margins. In 1990 and 1997 he lost allegedly[citation needed] because of engineered results that entrusted heavy mandates to the Sharifs of Lahore on both occasions. It was because of the family’s spport in the Dera Ismail Khan constituency that Maulana Mufti Mahmud defeated the then invincible Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in the 1970 general elections.

Fazl ur-Rahman’s politics, like his father’s, has been at odds with the Muslim League. The father was in Jama’at Ulema-i-Hind (Madani group) which shared the views of the Congress on the partition issue. Fazl ur-Rahman remained in the camp of the political alliances and parties that were opposed to Nawaz Sharif’s League. Only once did he contest the election in alliance with the PML, in 1990, and then too he lost.
Fazl ur-Rahman built his public image by supporting Zulfaqir Ali Bhutto’s daughter Benazir Bhutto and the PPP during her second term as the prime minister.

Current status:
Fazal-ur-Rahman is in opposition in the National Assembly and Senate of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. His party has been implicated with the government of Prime Minister Syed Yousaf Raza Gillani.[citation needed]. Molana Fazal Rehman was greatly supported by Hazrat Molana Khuwaja Khan Muhammad Sahib of Kundian (a leader of Khatme Nabuwat. He is also known as ameeri jamiat[citation needed] and Moulana. He is regarded by some as an opportunist posing as an Islamic leader. However, his critics tagged him with the name “Maulana Diesel” in the past government of Benazir Bhutto due to his involvement in permits and making a lot of money. Opponents regard him as a corrupt man who is tarnishing the image of Islam.

Member of National Assembly of Pakistan:
Maulana Fazal-ur-Rehman has been elected to National Assembly on multiple occasions. He was appointed as Chairman of the parliamentary committee on foreign affairs in the second government of Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. He was Leader of the Opposition between 2004–2007, as he was leading a sizable contingent of opposition parliamentarians (mainly from MMA).
He is originally from Abdulkhel Panyala in the Dera Ismail Khan District of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.