Muhammad Rafiq Tarar (2 November 1929 – 7 March 2022) was President of Pakistan from 1 January 1998 to 20 June 2001, succeeding Wasim Sajjad and preceding Pervez Musharraf.
Biography[]
Muhammad Rafiq Tarar was born in Mandi Bahauddin, Punjab, British India in 1929 to a family of Muslim Jats, and he became active with Majlis-e-Ahrar-ul-Islam under British rule and becmae a follower of Muhammad Ali Jinnah's All-India Muslim League. He worked as a lawyer during the 1950s and founded a legal aid firm in Gujranwala during the 1960s, excelling at advocacy. Tarar served as a district court judge from 1966 to 1971, chairman of the Punjab Labour Court from 1971 to 1974, a judge of the Lahore High Court from 1974 to 1989, as Chief Justice of the Lahore High Court from 1989 to 1991, as a senior justice of the Supreme Court of Pakistan from 1991 to 1994, as a Senator from March to December 1997, and as President of Pakistan from 1998 to 2001. He shifted Pakistan's form of government from a semi-presidential system to parliamentary democracy, and he also surrendered his reserve power of dismissing the Prime Minister, triggering new elections and dissolving the National Assembly. He also passed constitutional amendments which made the President a figurehead. He resisted and did not endorse Pervez Musharraf's 1999 military coup, and he was forced to step down in 2001 and succeeded by Musharraf through a referendum, becoming Pakistan's fourth military ruler. Tarar died in 2022 at the age of 92.