Farooq Leghari

Farooq Leghari

Farooq Ahmad Khan Leghari (Balochi, Punjabi, Urdu: سردار فاروق احمد خان لغاری‎; 29 May 1940 – 20 October 2010), was eighth President of Pakistan, serving from 14 November 1993 until his resignation on 2 December 1997.

His political philosophy reflected the democratic socialism, Leghari was the first Baloch president from the Saraiki speaking Baloch people from the Punjab Province of Pakistan, and was also a senior member of the Pakistan Peoples Party until 2004 when his political differences arose with Benazir Bhutto, forcing him to ally with the centre-right conservative Pakistan Muslim League. Educated at the Forman Christian College University in Punjab Province of Pakistan, and the Oxford University in England, United Kingdom, Leghari started his government career through the civil bureaucracy, taking a bureaucratic assignment in East-Pakistan in 1960s until 1970. Generally an apolitical, Leghari joined the democratic socialist Pakistan Peoples Party led by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1970s and was finally named as the presidential candidate by Benazir Bhutto due to his apolitical vision and was merely a constitutional and ceremonial figurehead in the Benazir's government; whilst Benazir exercised her authority while running her government. In 1996, Leghari surprisingly dismissed his leader's government after being convinced Benazir Bhutto and her spouse Asif Ali Zardari's involvement in Murtaza Bhutto's death, as well as an economic default was reached at that time.

After dismissing, his political ideology clashed with conservative prime minister Nawaz Sharif, and his intervention to support to Chief Justice Sajjad Ali Shah's matter finally led the resignation of his presidency after being forced by the conservatives and persuaded by the Pakistan Armed Forces in 1997. His relations with Benazir Bhutto were contentions leading him to join the Pakistan Pakistan Muslim League in May 2004, despite an ideological difference. During this period, Leghari remains inactive from national politics and in Rawalpindi's Combined Military Hospital due to a long related heart illness on 20 October 2010.