ISLAMABAD, Jan 12: Five months after elections of the central office-bearers in a general council meeting, the Central Working Committee (CWC) of the main opposition party Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PMLN) on Thursday 'unanimously elected' Iqbal Zafar Jhagra as the new secretary general of the party.

Sources in the party told Dawn that Jhagra, who was the head of the election commission that conducted the so-called elections of the central office-bearers in July,last year, was made the secretary general when the veteran party leader and former foreign minister Sartaj Aziz finally turned down the offer to accept the position citing some personal reasons.

Sensing a possible dissent within party ranks, the leadership, which had earlier nominated Mr Aziz as the secretary general, changed the decision and left the position vacant at the eleventh hour.

Hundreds of the participants including senior members and district office-bearers of the party, and media persons present at the Central General Council meeting at the ConventionCentre were surprised to hear from the head of the election commission, Mr Jhagra, that Sartaj Aziz had been appointed as the senior vice-president from the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province.

Mr Jhagra had left the audience in further suspense when he skipped the office of the general secretary while announcing the names of the central office-bearers who, according to him, had been elected unopposed as no one submitted nomination papers against the candidates.

Sources in the party told Dawn that the decision of not giving the key office to the 82year-old technocrat was made directly by party chief Nawaz Sharif after consultation with his close aides and senior members of the party minutes before arriving at the venue of the general council meeting.

The nomination of Mr Aziz had created an unrest within the ranks of the party and some of the leaders, including former office-bearers, in their private conversations had started openly criticising the leadership's move to give the position to a person who, according to them, was not seen anywhere in political activities when the party faced the most difficult and worst period in its history during the rule of former military dictator Gen Pervez Musharraf.