Overview
Shahid Khaqan Abbasi (; born 27 December 1958) is a Pakistani politician and businessman who served as the 21st prime minister of Pakistan from August 2017 to May 2018. Abbasi is the senior vice President of the Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N), and secretary-general of Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM), an anti-PTI coalition of political parties in Pakistan. He has been a Member of the National Assembly of Pakistan since October 2018. Previously, he served as a member of the National Assembly for 8
non—consecutive terms since 1988.
Abbasi started his political 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. In August 2017, he was elected as 21st Prime Minister of Pakistan by the National Assembly.
Early life and education
Abbasi was born on 27 December 1958 in his hometown of Murree in 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.
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