Pakistan's former prime minister Jamali passes away at 76

Gulf Today Report

Pakistan's former prime minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali, who served under military leader Pervez Musharraf, has died, his family announced on Thursday.

Jamali, the country's first and only elected prime minister from Balochistan in 2004, was replaced by Shaukat Aziz. The 76-year-old Jamali died in the city of Rawalpindi outside Islamabad on Wednesday after suffered a heart attack recently.

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Jamali was elected prime minister but with limited powers in November 2002, when president Musharraf allowed parliamentary elections to take place after he took power in a bloodless 1999 coup.

In this Jan.6, 2004 photo shows late Indian PM Atal Behari Vajpayee (right) and Zafarullah Jamali (left) wave hands at the SAARC summit in Islamabad. AFP

Musharraf went on to rule the country until 2008 but was forced to resign the same year after pro-military parties lost parliamentary elections and the country transitioned back to a democracy.

Jamali stepped down in the summer of 2004 after developing differences with the party leadership and Musharraf, paving the way for one of his cabinet ministers, Shaukat Aziz, to fill the post until the next parliamentary election in 2008.

Hailing from an influential political family, Jamali was the first and only prime minister to come from the oil-and-gas-rich province of Balochistan, which has seen several long-running Islamist and separatist insurgencies.

Zafarullah Jamali (C), Khaleda Zia (right) and Chandrika Kumaratunga (left) stand at attention during the closing ceremony of SAARC summit. File / AFP

He was to be buried Thursday in his ancestral town of Rojhan Jamali.