Shahid Khaqan Abbasi

Speaker

Shahid Khaqan Abbasi

Businessman & Former Prime Minister of Pakisstaan

Pakistani politician and businessman who served as the 18th Prime Minister of Pakistan from August 2017 to May 2018. Abbasi was the senior vice president of the Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N), and had been the secretary-general of the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM), an anti-PTI coalition of political parties in Pakistan. He had been a Member of the National Assembly of Pakistan from October 2018 to August 2023 and previously served as a member of the National Assembly for 8 non-consecutive terms since 1988.

Abbasi started his career after the death of his father in 1988, and since then he has been elected a Member of the National Assembly six times for Constituency NA-50 (Rawalpindi).

After the PML-N victory in the 1997 general election, he served as Chairman of Pakistan International Airlines until the 1999 Pakistani coup d’état. After the formation of a temporary coalition government following the 2008 general election, he was briefly the Minister for Commerce in the Gillani ministry. After the 2013 general election, he became the Minister for Petroleum and Natural Resources in the third Sharif ministry, where he served from 2013 until the disqualification of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif after the Panama Papers case decision in July 2017. He was elected as 21st Prime Minister of Pakistan by the National Assembly in August 2017.

Abbasi was born on 27 December 1958 in Dewal village, Murree District, Punjab. He attended Lawrence College in Murree. In 1978, he attended the University of California, Los Angeles, where he received a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering. Following this, he began a career as an electrical engineer. In 1985, he attended George Washington University, where he gained a master’s degree in Electrical Engineering. After graduating from George Washington University, Abbasi became a professional electrical engineer. He worked in the United States during the 1980s before moving to Saudi Arabia,] where he worked on energy projects in the oil and gas industry.

Shahid Khaqan Abbasi began his political career after his father’s death in 1988, winning his first National Assembly seat from Rawalpindi at age 30. Over the years, he was re-elected multiple times, serving as Federal Parliamentary Secretary for Defence and later as Chairman of Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) under Nawaz Sharif. Following the 1999 military coup, he was imprisoned for two years in the plane hijacking case but was later acquitted. Abbasi is known for his loyalty to the PML-N and his refusal to turn against Sharif despite military pressure.

After becoming Prime Minister in 2017, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi retained most of Nawaz Sharif’s cabinet, later expanding it to 58 members. He appointed Khawaja Asif as Foreign Minister, Darshan Punshi as the first Hindu cabinet member in over 20 years, and Rana Afzal Khan as State Minister for Finance.

Speaker