Stalemate ends: Ghous Bakhsh Barozai named Balochistan interim chief minister

Barozai set to take oath on March 23, according to official announcement.

QUETTA:

The stalemate over the caretaker chief minister of Balochistan finally ended on Thursday, as Chief Minister Nawab Aslam Raisani and opposition leader Nawabzada Tariq Magsi named Nawab Ghous Bakhsh Barozai for the post.

Magsi announced the name at a news conference with Chief Minister Raisani following their meeting.

“The constitutional process in Balochistan has been successfully completed in a democratic way,” Raisani said. He also sought to clarify the process of naming the caretaker CM, claiming it had been misrepresented by the media.

“Ehsan Shah was never among the candidates for the caretaker CM…  it was only the media which mentioned him as a possible candidate,” he maintained.

Barozai will take oath on Pakistan Day at Governor House.

He is the son of senior Pakistan Peoples Party leader Mohammad Khan Barozai, a former chief minister and speaker of the Balochistan Assembly.

Raisani vehemently denied the charge of corruption against his government and its leaders at the news conference. “Our government has completed record-breaking development projects,” he asserted. He cited the increase of Balochistan’s share in the National Finance Commission award and the Supreme Court’s decision on the Reko Diq project as major achievements for his government.

Raisani also demanded the handover of the Reko Diq and Gwadar port projects to the Balochistan government. “Reko Diq and Gwadar Port belong to the people of Balochistan. As such, they should be handed over to the provincial government.”

“I had suggested from the very beginning that the federal government hand over the portfolio of ports and shipping to either the Punjab or Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa governments, rather than Sindh or Balochistan, so that they could have made an unbiased policy and hand over Gwadar port to the Balochistan government,” he said.

“But during my two months in self-exile, Gwadar was handed over to China,” Raisani maintained.

Other political leaders present at the conference agreed with the chief minister’s stance on the Reko Diq project and Gwadar port, and insisted that Balochistan be given royalties on gas being imported from Iran since the pipeline will pass through the province.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 22^nd, 2013.