Alwaght- Pakistan’s parliament elected opposition leader Shehbaz Sharif as prime minister on Monday, ending a week-long constitutional crisis that climaxed on Sunday when his predecessor Imran Khan lost a no-confidence vote.
Shehbaz Sharif, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) president and, was elected unopposed as the new prime minister of Pakistan by parliament after rival candidate Shah Mahmood Qureshi announced that his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party will boycott the voting and staged a walkout.
A total of 174 lawmakers in the 342-seat National Assembly voted in favor of the younger brother of three-time premier Nawaz Sharif. Analysts say Shehbaz, unlike Nawaz, enjoys amicable relations with Pakistan's military, which traditionally controls foreign and defense policy in the nuclear-armed nation of 220 million people.
Before Sharif was elected, dozens of lawmakers from Khan’s party resigned in a move to pressure the new ruling party and its allies to call for elections. Khan was voted out just after midnight on Sunday following a long and drawn out no-confidence debate that saw several adjournments and speeches from his associates in parliament decrying the move as a conspiracy driven by the US.
