[Politics] Pakistan elects new prime minister, ending political crisis

[FazzNoth]

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 set off street protests and a mass resignation of lawmakers.

Sharif’s election brings to a close a weeklong 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 defense 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 increase 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 party had submitted papers nominating Qureshi as its candidate for prime minister.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/pakistan-elects-shehbaz-sharif-prime-minister-rcna23845