Pakistan’s parliament votes in Sharif as Prime Minister

Pakistan’s parliament on Monday elected Shehbaz Sharif Prime Minister after a week-long constitutional crisis that climaxed on Sunday when his predecessor Imran Khan lost a no-confidence vote.   

 Shehbaz, 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 nuclear-armed nation of 220 million people The younger Sharif emerged as the leader of a united opposition to topple Khan, a former cricket star who has claimed that the United States was behind his downfall   

 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 opponents.   

 “We are announcing we are all resigning,” Shah Mahmood Qureshi, former Foreign Minister and vice president of Khan’s party, said in a speech in the assembly.   

 Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party had submitted papers nominating Qureshi as its candidate for prime minister.   
 The mass resignations will require fresh by-elections in well over 100 seats.