By NNN-PTI
Islamabad : PPP is “rethinking” its position on Makhdoom Amin Fahim being the prime ministerial candidate as it would have to choose a person who could take along its coalition partners in a new government in Pakistan, party co-Chairman Asif Ali Zardari has indicated.
After the PPP did not get a majority in the February 18 parliamentary polls due to “selective rigging”, it began “rethinking the position” because of the considerations of forming a coalition government, according to Zardari.
The issue of choosing the prime ministerial candidate was still “wide open”, he said.
PPP emerged as the largest party in the general election with 88 seats and is set to form a coalition government with parties like PML-N and ANP.
“Makhdoom Amin Fahim is a very senior person in our party and we respect him tremendously but at the moment the challenge that we are faced with we were looking (before the polls) at getting a two-thirds majority…We thought in the party that this is it, we are going to make it…But somehow something happened,” Zardari said.
“It’s not that I need a different person. Now in the party we are rethinking the position. Amin Fahim is of course the first runner, we are just seeing how we are going to get out of this absolute challenge that we have been faced with,” he told interviewer Karan Thapar on the “Devil’s Advocate” programme.
Three days after the assassination of his wife, former premier Benazir Bhutto, in December, Zardari had said she had wanted Fahim to be the party’s prime ministerial candidate though a final decision would be taken by the PPP’s top leadership.