Politics, in the turbulent nation of Pakistan, remains a matter of family clans. After the general elections held last Thursday, shaken by violence and accusations of fraud, the two main parties in the National Assembly emerged from the polls, exponents of two political dynasties that have monopolized much of the power in recent decades, have agreed this week to join forces and votes to invest Shehbaz Sharif, 72, as prime minister, with the support of other minority parties. If it is finally successful, the pact would leave out of play the formation of imprisoned former Prime Minister Imran Khan, whose independent candidates led the scrutiny and represent the first force in Parliament, although they do not have a sufficient majority to form a Government in lonely. Khan's party also nominated his general secretary, Omar Ayub, as its candidate for prime minister this Thursday, although he does not seem to have the required support.
The presumed next prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), had already briefly served as head of government between 2022 and 2023, after the motion of no confidence that removed Khan from power. In those months, he had to deal with a similar coalition of parties. Shehbaz is the younger brother of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who has headed the Executive up to three times. Nawaz was the one who in fact stood in the elections as leader of the PML-N after returning from a four-year self-imposed exile and having the sentences against him annulled. But finally his brother was the nominee for the investiture, after closing an agreement with the other key political dynasty in the fifth most populous nation on the planet (235.8 million inhabitants in 2022): that of the Bhuttos.
The third formation in the Assembly, the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), is led by Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, son of Benazir Bhutto, the first woman to serve as head of Government in a Muslim country, assassinated in 2007, and grandson of Also former Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, deposed and executed by the military in 1979. Bilawal confirmed on Monday that he would support the PML-N candidacy, although without joining its Executive. In the distribution of power quotas, in any case, Asif Ali Zardari, father of Bilawal Bhutto, widower of the assassinated Benazir Bhutto and co-president of the PPP, will be nominated for the position of president of the country, a position that he already held between 2008 and 2013.
The vote is expected to take place in the coming weeks in a Parliament in which Imran Khan's independent candidates obtained 93 seats, compared to 75 for the Sharif party and 54 for the Bhutto party. In the elections, candidates competed for 264 seats out of the 336 total in the assembly. The rest are seats reserved for women and minorities that are distributed based on the distribution of forces, although independents are not included in this allocation. The prime minister must be sworn in with a simple majority of 169 votes.
“We have decided to form a coalition government [para] get the country out of the crisis [actual]”, declared Bhutto-Zardari in an appearance in Islamabad in which both parties were present, along with other minority political forces that plan to provide their support in the inauguration. “The critical phase during the elections has ended, and now a new Parliament is going to be formed. We have to put an end to our differences to move our nation forward and rebuild our economy,” said Shehbaz Sharif, who assured that the parties that support him have a two-thirds parliamentary majority. Zardari even claimed the support of the Pakistan Justice Movement (PTI), the group of the imprisoned Khan, as part of a reconciliation process. “Everyone has to be on board the economic agenda for the general interest of the nation,” said the politician, as reported by the Pakistani media. GeoNews.
Crisis in a nuclear country
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The atomic nation is trying to navigate a complicated situation. On the one hand, there are the shocks of a growing spiral of violence linked to insurgent militias in the border areas with Afghanistan. On the other hand, it is mired in a post-pandemic economic crisis, with rampant inflation that is around 30%, and must face a black hole of debt that will require the negotiation of a new bailout with the International Monetary Fund. Islamabad agreed last summer – with Shehbaz then as prime minister – on a package of 3 billion dollars (about 2.8 billion euros) with the multilateral organization in exchange for a stabilization program, which expires in March. Renegotiation will be one of the central tasks of the new Government.
In the intense battle of family powers, the Sharif lineage brings another horse, that of the vice president of the PML-N, Maryam Nawaz, daughter of Nawaz and niece of Shehbaz. After the regional elections, which were held simultaneously with the general elections, Maryam has been nominated to serve as head of the Executive of the province of Punjab, a position that her uncle and her father already held in the past. She has been in charge of spreading the idea that her father is not abandoning politics, but will actively participate and supervise the federal and Punjab governments. The reason for his absence, he clarified, has to do with his commitments during the campaign: “He made it clear in his electoral speeches that he will not be part of any coalition government,” said the daughter in a message on the social network in which he underlines the central role of his father: “Shehbaz Sharif and I are your soldiers, we are subject to your orders and we will work under your leadership and supervision; May Allah grant us success.”
Punjab, the Sharif stronghold, is a political thermometer often essential to achieving a victory at the national level. The family settled in the capital of this region, Lahore, after the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947. On the outskirts of the city, Maryam's grandfather and father of the two former prime ministers, founded a steel company that became one of the largest foundries in the country. Both Nawaz and Shehbaz joined the industrial group in their youth, before making the leap into politics, a path that was paved by the former, who is the eldest of the brothers.
Nawaz Sharif ruled three times between 1990 and 2017. And his successive rises and falls sum up the recent history of the country. In the nineties, he alternated in power with the assassinated Benazir Bhutto, but was forced to leave the country after his confrontation with General Pervez Musharraf, whom he had appointed to head the military. Musharraf led a coup d'état and took power as president in 2001. Sharif would return years later, and served again as prime minister in 2013, but in 2017 he resigned surrounded by the revelations of the so-called Panama Papers, which were attributed to him. and his family (including his daughter Maryam) companies in tax havens. He was convicted of corruption and went into self-imposed exile again.
During his absence, in 2018, Imran Khan's PTI managed to win the elections after managing to excite a good part of the electorate, especially the young and educated sectors of Pakistani society. But once in charge, Khan, 71, a former national cricket star, came into conflict with the powerful military, whose influence remains decisive. He was removed from power in a parliamentary no-confidence motion in 2022, and replaced by Shehbaz Sharif, paving the way for the return of the self-exiled brother, Nawaz Sharif, last October. Shortly after arriving, he appealed his convictions, which, thanks to changing political winds, were annulled in December. Shortly after, he presented his candidacy to the National Assembly for last Thursday's elections.
Since election night, Khan's PTI has multiplied its complaints of fraud in an election to which it arrived already in tatters: its leader was behind bars, with several sentences totaling dozens of years, and its candidates presented themselves as independents, after after the Electoral Commission prohibited the party from using its emblematic symbol, a cricket bat, in the elections. The group has denounced a strategy of political persecution. Shortly before the elections, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights expressed his “concern” at “the pattern of harassment, arrests and prolonged imprisonment of PTI leaders and their sympathizers,” in addition to the multiple legal cases against Khan.
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