PPP’s Owais Shah elected as Sindh Assembly Speaker, Christian leader Anthony Naveed becomes his deputy

KARACHI: Senior leader of the Pakistan Peoples Party Syed Owais Shah was on Sunday elected as the Speaker of the Sindh province Assembly while the party’s Christian face Anthony Naveed was elected as his deputy, becoming the first non-Muslim deputy speaker in the country’s history.

Outgoing speaker Agha Siraj Durrani said a total of 147 votes were cast for the post of speaker, of which Shah received 111. His opponent and Muttahida Qaumi Movement (Pakistan) leader Sofia Shah got 36 votes, Dawn newspaper reported.

Nine independent members of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and one member of the Jamaat-e-Islami did not participate in the voting and boycotted the election.

PPP leader and prominent Christian rights activist Anthony Naveed was elected as the deputy speaker of the provincial assembly, becoming the first non-Muslim deputy speaker in the history of Pakistan. Naveed secured 111 votes while MQM-P’s Rashid Khan got 36 votes.

Following the win, Naveed took his oath in Urdu and then went up to the speaker’s dais to embrace Speaker Shah.

On Sunday, nine PTI-backed independent members of the Sindh Assembly also took the oath, resulting in a total of 157 members taking the oath. Jamaat-e-Islami’s member Muhammad Farooq also took the oath, while 3 members of the Grand Democratic Alliance (GDA) were absent.

With 114 members, the PPP is the largest party in the Sindh Assembly, and MQM-P is the second-largest party with 36 seats. The GDA has 3 members, Jamaat-e-Islami has 1, and there are 9 independent members.

On Saturday, several new and young faces, who had won the recent general election in Sindh, were sworn in as lawmakers of the Sindh Assembly.

Many members, being first-time lawmakers with no previous parliamentary experience, took their oath in the session chaired by outgoing Speaker Durrani, expressing hope to bring about change.

Several come from dynastic politics with feudal backgrounds, while a few belong to the middle class.

Newly-elected Speaker Shah later said that the election for the office of chief minister will be held on Monday at 2 pm.

He said nomination papers can be obtained between 2 pm and 3 pm on Sunday. Scrutiny of the papers under Rule 19 will take place at 6 pm.

“A candidate may withdraw his candidature at any time before the commencement of the election by submitting an application in writing under his hand to the speaker […],” the speaker added.