By Staff Reporter
GILGIT: Pakistan Peoples Party and its ruling partner PML-N completed their takeover of Gilgit-Baltistan’s new assembly on Monday, sweeping the territory’s two top parliamentary offices without contest as a three-party power-sharing arrangement moved swiftly from deal to fact.
PPP’s Imran Nadeem was elected speaker of the sixth Gilgit-Baltistan Legislative Assembly unopposed after no rival candidate submitted nomination papers within the stipulated deadline. Shortly after, PML-N’s Malik Kifayat ur Rehman was similarly declared elected deputy speaker, also without opposition, following the scrutiny of nomination papers.
The clean sweep of both offices, secured without a single vote being cast, underscored the commanding arithmetic the PPP-PML-N-IPP coalition commands in the 33-seat house.
Nadeem, a first-time assembly member elected from Shigar district in the territory’s Baltistan region, takes the speaker’s chair under the terms of an alliance in which the PPP secured the speakership while ceding the deputy speakership and the governorship to the PML-N. Kifayat ur Rehman, also a first-time assembly member, carries a lineage rooted in the territory’s parliamentary history — he is the son of the late Malik Miskeen, a former speaker of the GB Assembly from Diamer’s Tangeer district.
Members of the assembly and political leaders from across party lines offered congratulations to both newly elected office-bearers, expressing confidence they would uphold democratic traditions and ensure the impartial functioning of the house.
The elections earlier in the day had been preceded by the swearing-in of 30 assembly members, a ceremony presided over by outgoing Speaker Nazir Ahmed Advocate. The 30 members comprised 21 lawmakers elected on general seats, six women on reserved seats and three technocrats. Results in three constituencies — GBA-9 Skardu-3, GBA-15 Diamer-1 and GBA-17 Diamer-3 — remain pending because of unresolved legal and electoral disputes.
The PPP’s Amjad Hussain, who leads the party in the territory, is widely expected to be elected unopposed chief minister, completing the coalition’s consolidation of the executive and legislative machinery of government.
The coalition was assembled in rapid succession over the weekend following the June 7 general election. The PPP, which emerged as the single largest party with 13 seats, first sealed a power-sharing deal with the PML-N, which holds nine seats. A day later, the Istehkam-e-Pakistan Party, which holds six seats after four post-election independents joined its ranks, announced it was backing the PPP-led alliance. Together, the three parties command a substantial majority. Majlis Wahdat-e-Muslimeen and a PTI-backed independent each hold one seat.
“We will join the PPP-led alliance,” IPP Gilgit-Baltistan President Haji Gul Bar Khan said at a joint press conference on Sunday. Hussain called the three-party alignment a development that “would put the region on the path of development and prosperity.”
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