April 11, 2022 / 21:47 IST
Pakistan Political Crisis Highlights: Pakistan's parliament chose a more Western-friendly politician, Shehbaz Sharif, as prime minister on Monday, completing the ousting of predecessor Imran Khan in a political crisis that has sparked street protests and a mass resignation of lawmakers.
Sharif's election brings to a close a week-long constitutional confrontation that climaxed on Sunday when Khan lost a no-confidence vote, although the nuclear-armed nation is likely to remain prone to political and economic turbulence.
Sharif, 70, who has a reputation domestically as an effective administrator more than as a politician, is the younger brother of three-time prime minister Nawaz Sharif.
Analysts say Shehbaz, unlike Nawaz, enjoys amicable relations with Pakistan's military, which traditionally controls foreign and defence policy in the country of 220 million people.
After the vote, Sharif vowed to tackle an economic malaise that has seen the rupee hit an all-time low and the central bank hike rates by its largest amount in decades last week.
"If we have to save the sinking boat, what we all need is hard work, and unity, unity and unity," he said in his maiden speech to parliament.
"We are beginning a new era of development today."
Just minutes before the vote, legislators from Khan's party resigned en masse from the lower house of parliament in protest at the expected formation of a government by his political foes.
"We are announcing we are all resigning," Shah Mahmood Qureshi, former foreign minister and vice president of Khan's party, told the assembly. The mass resignations will require fresh by-elections in well over 100 seats.
Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party had submitted papers nominating Qureshi as its candidate for prime minister.
Bereft of allies and coalition partners, embattled Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan was ousted from power in the early hours of April 9 following a no-confidence vote.
Khan’s ouster extends Pakistan’s unenviable record for political instability: no prime minister has completed their full term since independence from Britain in 1947, although Khan is the first to be removed through a no-confidence vote. Though the week-long drama preceding the trust vote plunged Pakistan in a constitutional crisis, Imran Khan’s downfall had been in the making since last year when he crossed swords with the country’s all-powerful army.
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