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Pakistan
This Week in AsiaPolitics

As Imran Khan’s star wanes, is Pakistan’s military pushing Bilawal Bhutto Zardari for prime minister?

  • Bhutto Zardari, 34, ‘wouldn’t have shot up to the very senior post of foreign minister without the military’s blessing’, one analyst notes
  • While the young minister has represented Pakistan on both domestic and global fronts, he has not gained widespread acceptance among the public

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Pakistani Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari (centre) during an event in Bagh, Pakistani-administered Kashmir region, on May 23. Photo: EPA-EFE
Tom Hussain
As the political fortunes of Pakistan’s former leader Imran Khan sink following a military-led crackdown, foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari could emerge as a prime minister candidate after having reportedly proved his “mettle” to the generals.
Bhutto Zardari’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) is expected to rope in many former members of the national and provincial assemblies who have recently deserted Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party under pressure from the country’s all-powerful military, following attacks on security installations on May 9 by mobs of the party’s activists after Khan was arrested in a land scam case.

With the help of these defectors, known as “electables” because of their large, loyal home constituency vote banks, analysts said the PPP hoped to expand its representation beyond its fortress in southern Sindh province for the first time in a decade to populous Punjab, home to about half of the National Assembly’s 262 directly elected seats.

By doing so, the PPP and its allies in Sindh and Balochistan provinces are seeking to form a bloc that could hold the balance of power after the forthcoming election scheduled to be held in October, which is widely expected to produce a hung National Assembly.

03:08

Pakistan’s top court orders former prime minister Imran Khan be released from ‘invalid’ detention

Pakistan’s top court orders former prime minister Imran Khan be released from ‘invalid’ detention

Murtaza Solangi, an Islamabad-based political analyst and former director general of state broadcaster Radio Pakistan, said PPP chairman Bhutto Zardari’s political strategy was “the only pragmatic path he can pursue”.

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