Pakistan: National Assembly elects Shehbaz Sharif as new prime minister
Shehbaz Sharif was elected unopposed as Pakistan's new prime minister on Monday in a crucial National Assembly session. The frontrunners for the post were Sharif, president of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), and Shah Mahmood Qureshi, former foreign minister and vice-chairperson of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI). The election came after the opposition voted out PM Imran Khan in a dramatic no-confidence motion on Sunday.
- The vote on the no-confidence motion led to Khan's defeat—who lost by 174 votes in favor of the motion in the 342-member National Assembly—making him Pakistan's first PM to be removed through a no-trust vote.
- The vote came after Pakistan's Supreme Court on Thursday overturned the motion's dismissal by Deputy Speaker Qasim Suri last Sunday and reconstituted the National Assembly terming it "unconstitutional."
Imran Khan decided to step down as a member of the National Assembly prior to the election of the new prime minister, stating that he would not sit with "thieves." Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party boycotted the election and staged a walkout before resigning in unison, effectively removing any possible obstacles to Sharif's election as PM.
Fawad Chaudhry said all PTI lawmakers would resign from the National Assembly and refuse to serve in any government formed under a "foreign agenda." He was referring to Khan's claim that the US was conspiring with the opposition to destabilize his government.
PML-N chief Sharif, born in 1951 in Lahore, is the younger brother of former three-time Pakistani PM Nawaz Sharif. An alumnus of Government College University, Lahore, he had previously served three terms as the chief minister of Pakistan's crucial Punjab province. He was elected the PML-N chief in 2018 and became a member of the National Assembly for the first time the same year.
"A man who has one corruption case of 16 billion rupees and another corruption case of 8 billion rupees against him...for that person to be selected and elected as the prime minister, there cannot be a bigger insult to the country. We're resigning from the National Assembly," PTI's Twitter account quoted Khan as saying. Sharif was notably involved in a 2020 money laundering case.
A Pakistani court on Monday deferred the indictment of Sharif until April 27 and that of his son Hamza Shehbaz in the money laundering case. Extending their bail period, the court permitted Sharif to take over as the country's prime minister.
