ISLAMABAD, Aug 25: Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan Chairman Raziur Rehman has sent his resignation to the Finance Ministry after realising that working with the new coalition government would be impossible for him because of being a relic of the Musharraf regime and a buddy of the former Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz.

The SECP chairman did not decline when he was asked at a news conference here on Monday that whether he had sent his resignation to the Ministry of Finance or not. He did not say a “No” when he was asked as to why he had to send the resignation himself and did not wait for the government to decide about his fate. All he could do was to just smile back at a television reporter who had sought his comment on the issue.

Sources told Dawn that after the somewhat humiliated ouster of a number of high-ups, who were appointed during Musharraf regime, by the PPP-led coalition government with the recent removal from his services of the chairman Federal Bureau of Revenue (FBR) Abdullah Yousaf on the top, Mr Rehman had decided to bow out before he is shown the door.

By his contract, the SECP chairman’s three-year term will conclude by January 2009. He was appointed on the post on the recommendation of former prime minister Shaukat Aziz in January 2006, soon after Dr Tariq Hassan was removed from the slot when the later started to show his teeth to a bunch of powerful brokers allegedly involved in the March 2005 Karachi Stock Exchange crash, which had cost small investors over $17billion losses.

Sources told Dawn that Finance Minister Naveed Qamar is considering a few names for the slot including NIT chairman Tariq Iqbal, who has also been the commissioner Securities Market Division of SECP in the past and Syed Saleem Raza, a chartered accountant by profession and brother of the president of the National Bank of Pakistan (NBP) Ali Raza.

Sources told Dawn that Mr Rehman has already received a lucrative job offer from the Dubai Islamic Bank. The Finance Ministry has not yet accepted his resignation, but it is expected that he may be relieved from his job by the end of this month.