Former president Mamnoon laid to rest

Former president and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PM-N) leader Mamnoon Hussain, who passed away a day earlier after losing battle to cancer, was laid to rest on Thursday.

Prominent religious scholar Mufti Taqi Usmani led the funeral prayers of the former president at the Masjid-e-Sultan in the Defence neighbourhood of the city. After the funeral prayers, the burial was performed in a graveyard in DHA Phase VIII.

Leaders of various political and religious parties, bureaucrats and trade leaders attended the funeral prayers.

To attend the last rites of the Hussain, former prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, PML-N central leader Ahsan Iqbal and former Sindh governor Muhammad Zubair especially arrived from Azad Jammu Kashmir where the party has been running its electoral campaign for the polls.

On behalf of PML-N supreme leader Nawaz Sharif, the PML-N leaders later laid a floral sheet on the grave of the former president.

PML-N Sindh leaders Shah Muhammad Shah, Khawaja Tariq Nazeer and Nasiruddin Mehmood, Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl’s Aslam Ghouri and Maulana Abdul Karim Abid, Pakistan People Party Sindh Secretary General Waqar Mehdi, Pak Sarzameen Party’s Syed Hafeezdudin, Jamaat-e-Islami Sindh chief Muhammad Hussain Mehanti were also prominent among those who attended the funeral prayers.

The coffin of the former president was covered in the national flag when it was brought to the mosque for the funeral prayers. His Soyem will take place today (Friday) at the Masjid-e-Sultan after the Asr prayers.

Hussain was admitted to a private hospital in Karachi last week, according to his son Arsalan Mamnoon. He was diagnosed with cancer in February 2020.

The former president was born in 1940 in Agra, Uttar Pradesh, before Independence. His family migrated to Pakistan in 1947 at the time of Partition.

He graduated from the Institute of Business Administration, Karachi, in 1965. He also served as the head of the Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Hussain remained an active member of the PML-N for the past several decades. He was the governor of Sindh from June till October 1999 when Nawaz Sharif’s government was overthrown by the then army chief General Pervez Musharraf. He also previously served as an adviser to the chief minister of the province Liaquat Jatoi.

After the military coup, Hussain firmly stood with Nawaz when a large number of PML-N leaders defected to the newly formed Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid-e-Azam.

In July 2013, he was elected as the 12th President of Pakistan for a five-year term, replacing Pakistan Peoples Party supremo Asif Ali Zardari. In the presidential election, he defeated former SC judge Wajihuddin Ahmed, who was the candidate of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf. He is survived by a wife and three sons.