Pakistan’s Shehbaz Sharif elected PM as Khan’s party boycotts vote

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Pakistan’s Shehbaz Sharif elected PM as Khan’s party boycotts vote

6:20 CAT | 11 Apr 2022

Shehbaz Sharif, brother of three-time former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif., elected new PM. [File photo: Reuters]

Pakistan’s National Assembly on Monday elected Shehbaz Sharif to serve as prime minister, capping a stunning political reversal after Imran Khan was ousted in a no-confidence vote over the weekend.

The joint opposition leader, 70, was chosen with 174 votes in the 342-seat chamber. Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party boycotted the election and announced that its members would resign from the assembly en masse.

The last-minute dramatics only underscored the tensions surrounding Sharif’s rise to power in the nuclear-armed nation of 220 million people.

PTI supporters turned out in droves on Sunday night to protest Khan’s dismissal. The nationwide demonstrations were larger than many anticipated, showing that the former prime minister and cricket star still commands widespread popularity, and that his allegations of foreign plot to oust him have resonated.

Sharif, for his part, pledged just after Khan’s ouster that a government run by his coalition “would not take revenge” against its political opponents.

Never have such crowds come out so spontaneously and in such numbers in our history, rejecting the imported govt led by crooks. pic.twitter.com/YWrvD1u8MM

— Imran Khan (@ImranKhanPTI) April 10, 2022

Mian Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif was born in 1951 in Lahore, the country’s second-biggest city. His father was industrialist Mian Muhammad Sharif, while his older brother is three-time former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

Shehbaz joined the family’s steel business after graduation and was elected president of the Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industries in 1985. He went on to win election to the Punjab provincial assembly for the first time in 1988, and later became the province’s chief minister — a post he held for 12 years. His son Hamza Shahbaz is now a leading contender for that job.

Since August 2018, Shehbaz Sharif has been the opposition leader in the National Assembly. He leads the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, a center-right Punjab-centric political party named after his brother.

Aslam Bhootani, a National Assembly member representing Gwadar, voted for Sharif in parliament on Monday. He told Nikkei Asia that the main agenda of Sharif’s government would be to introduce electoral reforms as well as provide relief from the turbulent economic situation.

“There is a plethora of problems, time and resources are limited, but I still hope that Sharif’s government will succeed in providing relief to the people,” Bhootani said.

While serving as Punjab’s chief minister, Sharif developed a reputation as an effective administrator who can get the job done. “Shehbaz Sharif will work more relentlessly than any public office holder ever has,” Mosharraf Zaidi, a senior fellow at advisory firm Tabadlab in Islamabad, told Nikkei. “Expect him to be an incredibly capable and ruthless deployer of public sector capability.”

Beijing appears to have taken notice of Sharif as someone they can do business with. He worked closely with China on development projects under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a $50 billion Pakistan component of the Belt and Road.

Long Dingbin, a former Chinese consul general, once called Sharif “an old friend of China.” Last month, Nikkei reported comments from Pakistani insiders that China prefers a government led by Sharif’s PML-N.

But even before he sets foot in the prime minister’s office, Sharif faces major hurdles.

Pakistan’s politics are now highly charged. Khan and a significant portion of the country look unwilling to accept Sharif as prime minister.

When angry PTI supporters took the streets on Sunday, Khan tweeted a video and wrote, “Never have such crowds come out so spontaneously and in such numbers in our history, rejecting the imported govt led by crooks.” Khan had alleged that there was a U.S.-led conspiracy to topple him, and tried to use this as grounds to block the no-confidence motion before the Supreme Court intervened. Washington has denied any such plot.

In the coming days, the parliament speaker will need to confirm the resignations of the PTI assembly members one by one. Since holding by-elections for over 150 seats would be infeasible, this appears to be a tactic to force an early general election.

The election commission previously said it could not arrange polls until October at the earliest, however.

Zaidi, the Tabadlab senior fellow, said Sharif will have to confront three key challenges: a ballooning inflation problem, including petroleum price increases he needs to make immediately; reliance on a powerful but ideologically diverse political coalition; and a raucous opponent in Khan, who continues to push toxic conspiracy theories and will try to mobilize urban Pakistan against the new leader.

“This will make enacting reform very difficult,” Zaidi said. “Whatever reform he is able to achieve will require compromises by all political actors.”

Zaidi explained that Sharif represents the pragmatist wing of the PML-N — effective but not electrifying. “The party’s base is mobilized by Sharif’s elder brother, Nawaz Sharif, and niece Maryam. They are the so-called ideological wing of the party,” he said. He concluded that managing the PML-N internally could prove as challenging as the wider group of parties in the motley coalition.

Other experts pointed to the tax system as a priority.

“Shehbaz Sharif needs to expand the tax net and ensure tax collection so that Pakistan can reduce its reliance on international lending bodies” such as the International Monetary Fund, said Sabookh Syed, an independent analyst based in Pakistan. But Syed told Nikkei that many of Sharif’s political partners have vested interests in not paying taxes, which could make implementing reforms difficult.

Syed, like Zaid, highlighted the varied ideologies within Sharif’s coalition and his own PML-N, suggesting it will be tough to keep the coalition intact by meeting myriad demands in a sluggish economy. “The opposition of Imran Khan can keep [the coalition] intact for now but this is not a natural alliance and that will be a problem in the long run for Sharif,” Syed argued.

Source: nikkeiAsia