On his election as President, Mr. Leghari announced that he would strive to make the Presidency as “symbol of the unity of the Federation”. He renounced his party membership—even though it was not mandatory—in an effort to effect a really non-partisan profile. He told a group of newsmen that his endeavour would be to make the Institution of the President truly representative of the aspirations of all the federating units. He said he would strive for the supremacy of the Constitution and Parliament and in his endeavour he would not be deterred by any kind of opposition or obduracy.
Mr. Leghari has played tennis and polo, acquiring a ‘blue’ in Oxford University. He has represented Pakistan in pistol shooting in the Asian Games twice. He is also an avid hunter but believes very strongly in conservation of the habitat as well as the fauna and flora.
President Leghari reads extensively on a wide range of subjects. He is married and has two sons and two daughters.

Farooq Ahmad Khan Leghari has a deep commitment to democracy and the democratic process. He has waged a relentless struggle against dictatorship and the usurpation of people’s rights. He was jailed for his convictions. Kept in solitary confinement and subjected to physical and mental torture. In those years of deprivation and duress, his faith in the eventual triumph of the ‘people’s will’ never wavered. He stuck to his convictions and to his political party.
As such, his elevation to the highest office in the land is the culmination of systematic struggle for establishing the supremacy of the Constitution—a struggle waged over two decades with single-minded devotion to the finest tradition and ideals of democracy and of freedom, a struggle which despite years of oppression and difficulty, saw him being returned to Parliament on four separate occasions with overwhelming majority.
The Legharis are a Baloch tribe who are settled at the conjunction of the four provinces constituting Pakistan. Even though the bulk of them are settled in the District of D.G. Khan, they continue to influence and to have links with their compatriots in Sindh and Balochistan. President Leghari’s family have been hereditary chiefs of the Leghari tribe. His father, Nawab Muhammad Khan Leghari and his grandfather, Nawab Sir Jamal Khan Leghari, were particularly enlightened leaders, who introduced their trabe to modern ideas and an egalitarian polity. Nawab Jamal Khan had the distrinction of introducing the Shariat Law of inheritance among the Baloch tribes and also of having abolished the taxes traditionally paid to the tribal chiefs. Nawab Muhammad Khan took a prominent part in the Independence Movement and was confined as a political prisoner in 1946. After Independence, he served as Minister in the Punjab Government from 1949 to 1955.
President Leghari was born on 2nd May 1940 and went to school at Aitchison College, Lahore, in 1949. After graduating from school in 1958 he took a BA (Hons) degree from the Punjab University in 1960 and MA degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Oxford University (St. Catherine’s College). He played polo for the University and got a ‘blue’ in 1962.
On return to Pakistan, he competed successfully in the Central Superior Services Examination and worked in the Civil Service of Pakistan in various field and secretariat positions from 1964 to 1973. He resigned in 1973 to enter politics and joined the Pakistan People’s Party with which he remained till his election as President.
On joining the Pakistan People’s Party, he was assigned various organizational tasks and was elected to the Senate of Pakistan in 1075. in the 1977 general elections he was elected to the National Assembly from his ancestral constituency in Dera Ghazi Khan. He was also inducted into the Federal Cabinet of Mr. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto as Minister of Production.
In July 1977, Mr. Bhutto was overthrown and Martial Law imposed throughout Pakistan. Mr. Leghari opposed the authoritarian system and struggled for the restoration of Constitutional Rule and the supremacy of the Rule of Law. He was jailed from time to time for a total period of over three years. His long periods of incarceration in jail could not shake his belief in the right of the people to choose their system of government. It also made him turn inwards for extra strength to combat the forces arraigned against him.
During the period 1978—1983 Mr. Leghari worked as Secretary-General of the Pakistan People’s Party and subsequently as member of its Executive Committee. The period 1978 to 1988 was one of struggle for the restoration of democracy. The first general elections on party basis after the imposition of Martial Law permitted Mr. Leghari to participate and he won both the National and Provincial Assemblies elections in 1988. After a brief stint as Leader of the Opposition in the Punjab Assembly, Mr. Leghari was re-elected to the National Assembly in early 1989 and appointed Minister for Water and Power in Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto’s government. The dissolution of the Assemblies in August 1990 ended the government, but in the 1990 elections Mr. Leghari was again elected to the National Assembly.