Pakistan election: coalition to nominate Shehbaz Sharif for prime minister in bid to break deadlock
- The Pakistan Peoples Party said it would support Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz to form a minority government, after polls returned a hung parliament
- Independent candidates backed by ex-PM Imran Khan have won 92 seats, making them the largest group, but they cannot form a government on their own
Shehbaz Sharif will be the nominee for Pakistan’s next prime minister to lead a new coalition alliance formed between different parties, a spokeswoman said on Tuesday after national elections last week returned a hung parliament.
The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) on Tuesday said it would support Sharif’s party to form a minority government, ending a stalemate after inconclusive elections in the nuclear-armed nation lead to days of political uncertainty.
A spokesman for Sharif’s party, Marriyam Aurangzeb, said in a post on social media site X, formerly Twitter, that Nawaz Sharif, the elder brother of Shehbaz, had nominated him for the post.
Shehbaz Sharif belongs to his brother’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), the largest recognised party with 80 seats and PPP is second with 54. Together, the two parties have enough for a simple majority in the 264-seat legislature.
“We have decided that we will form government together to take Pakistan out of crisis,” the co-chairman of the PPP, former president Asif Ali Zardari, told a news conference, seated besides Shehbaz Sharif and leaders of other political parties.