On Monday, Pakistan’s parliament elected a new prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, after withdrawing confidence from the previous one, Imran Khan, who was elected by the nationalist and populist Movement for Justice of Pakistan party in 2018: the prime minister’s temporary replacement ends a weekslong stint political crisis, mainly related to the loss of political support for Khan.
Sharif, the new prime minister, is 70 and was the leader of the opposition to Khan’s government. He is President of the liberalconservative Muslim League of Pakistan party and was previously Governor of Punjab Province. He is also the younger brother of Nawaz Sharif, threetime Prime Minister of Pakistan and later convicted of corruption after he was found in the socalled “Panama Papers”, i.e. documents released in 2016 by an international journalistic investigation that contained thousands of information on financial transactions in tax havens by various personalities around the world.
One hundred MPs from Khan’s party resigned on Monday in protest at Sharif’s election: Byelections will soon be held in their place.
Like his brother, Sharif has excellent relations with the army, which is very powerful in Pakistan and has great influence on political life. Also due to the frequent incursions of the army into the country, no prime minister has yet managed to reach the natural end of his term.
According to various analyses, relations with the army also played a very important role in the political crisis that led to Khan’s detachment: Khan had various types of clashes with the army, some of which were related to Pakistan’s progressive distance. by the United States (with which Pakistan is traditionally an ally, albeit with many ambiguities and duplicity) and rapprochement with China. The Pakistani military has very close ties with the Americans, with whom it may wish to continue working, according to Foreign Policy’s Michael Kugelman, to combat Islamic extremism in the region (which the Taliban victory in neighboring Afghanistan helped fuel).
Sharif is the 23rd Prime Minister of Pakistan. She will now form a government that is expected to last until the next elections, scheduled for August 2023.
Also read: The political crisis in Pakistan, from the start