The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) will share positions in the new coalition government according to the proportion of their seats. The first session of the newly-elected National Assembly is on March 17. 

The formula for distributing ministries between the two parties at the centre and in Punjab has been finalised, said PML-N leader Javed Hashmi.

Berths in the federal cabinet are divided as follows: 54 per cent for PPP, 40 for PML-N, and six for the Awami National Party. But the ministries will be allocated only after negotiations between PPP and PML-N. Moreover, heads of the parliamentary committees will be nominated through “mutual understanding”, Hashmi said. 

“The opposition members will be asked to head some parliamentary committees,” he added.

The idea of the coalition government was discussed at a meeting of senior leaders of the PML-N chaired by Nawaz Sharif here on Wednesday. PML-N leaders Hashmi, Ishaq Dar and Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, among others, have been named as the party’s ministerial candidates.

Dar, who was finance minister during Sharif’s second tenure as prime minister before he was ejected from his seat by President Pervez Musharraf in 1999, is expected to get the same portfolio again.

Dar became finance minister after Pakistan conducted nuclear tests 1998, and he bailed out Pakistan from a financial crisis due to sanctions imposed by many nations. Some of his policies were even adopted later by former prime minister Shaukat Aziz.