Karachi
Pakistan People’s Party vice president Sherry Rehman was elected senator from Sindh unopposed on Monday.
She will serve as senator till 2018. The seat had fallen vacant after PPP’s Abdul Latif Ansari had resigned to accommodate Rehman.
Only two nominations were filed with the Sindh election commissioner last week – that Rehman and Nadeem Bhutto of the PPP as her covering candidate. Bhutto had withdrawn his candidature on Saturday.
Rehman has served as Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States and quit the office on May 15, 2013.
According to rules, she was not eligible to become a senator before two years of that office. For that reason, she could not participate in the senate elections in March this year.
Shahrbano Rehman, better known as Sherry Rehman, was born on December 21, 1960 in Karachi. She was educated at the Smith College and later at the University of Sussex where she studied arts, history and political science.
Rehman practiced as a professional journalist for 20 years, writing for national and international publications. She worked as the Editor-in-Chief of a leading magazine for 10 years and also served as a member of the Council of Pakistan Newspaper Editors from 1988-1998.
She served as an MNA from 2002 to 2007 and the central information secretary.
During that time, she was also the president of policy planning for the Pakistan People’s Party Parliamentarians and served on the foreign relations committee of the party.
In March 2008, Sherry Rehman was re-elected as an MNA from Sindh on a reserved seat for women.
During her tenure in parliament, Sherry Rehman authored all five PPP bills tabled in the National Assembly – the women empowerment bill, the anti-honour killings bill, the domestic violence prevention bill, the affirmative action bill and the hudood repeal bill.
She also moved two bills for the media – the freedom of information bill and the
Press Act, which prevents journalists on duty from being arrested under the 1999 Press Ordinance.
In January 2009, she was hailed “Democracy’s Hero” in a report of the International Republican Institute as a result of her close association with former prime minister Benazir Bhutto’s campaign for democracy in Pakistan.
In the same year, Rehman was also named among the “100 Most Influential Asians” by UAE magazine, Ahlan.
Rehman resigned as the federal information minister in 2009, due to differences of opinion with then president Asif Ali Zardari on imposing restrictions on the media.
On November 23, 2011, Rehman was appointed Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States. This appointment came 12 hours after Husain Haqqani was asked to resign by then prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani in the wake of the Memogate scandal.
Rehman remains the only legislator in Pakistan who has ever moved the parliament for amending the Pakistan blasphemy law provisions that are misused.
As a minister, she moved the first government bill in the National assembly in 2008 for a repeal of martial-law led anti-media clauses in the Media Regulatory Ordinance. In August 2008, Rehman moved similar amendments in the Print and Publication Ordinance that paved the way for constitutional protection for the print media.