ISLAMABAD — Imran Khan was dismissed Sunday as
Pakistan’s prime minister after losing a
no-confidence vote, paving the way for an unlikely opposition alliance facing
the same issues that bedeviled the cricket star-turned-politician.
اضافة اعلان
A new premier will
be chosen Monday, with centrist Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) chief Shehbaz
Sharif already anointed to lead the nuclear-armed nation of 220 million people.
His first task
will be to form a cabinet that will also draw heavily from the center-left
Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), as well as find space for the smaller
conservative Jamiatul Ulema-e-Islam-F (JUI-F) group.
The PPP and PML-N
are dynastic parties that have dominated Pakistani politics for decades — usually
as bitter rivals — and their relations are sure to fray in the lead-up to the
next election, which must be held by October 2023.
Shehbaz Sharif is
the brother of disgraced three-time prime minister Nawaz Sharif, while PPP
leader Bilawal Bhutto Zardari is the son of former president Asif Ali Zardari
and assassinated ex-premier Benazir Bhutto.
Khan’s exit was
met with a mixture of glee and sympathy.
“Back to the
pavilion,” screamed the influential Express Tribune newspaper, using a cricket
metaphor headline writers have found difficult to resist during Khan’s tenure.
No prime minister
has ever served a full term in Pakistan, but Khan is the first to lose office
via a vote of no-confidence.
“Sad day for
Pakistan ... a good man sent home,” his former information minister
Fawad Chaudhry said on Twitter.
There had been
high hopes for Khan when he was elected in 2018 on a promise of sweeping away
decades of entrenched corruption and cronyism, but he struggled to maintain
support with soaring inflation, a feeble rupee and crippling debt.
Militancy is also
on the rise, with Pakistan’s
Taliban emboldened by the return to power last
year of the hardline Islamist group in neighboring Afghanistan.
Khan had vowed to
fight “until the last ball”, and he certainly took his exit to the wire Sunday.
He tried
everything to stay in power after losing his majority in parliament — including
dissolving the assembly and calling a fresh election.
But the Supreme
Court deemed all his actions illegal and ordered them to reconvene and vote.
Still, there was drama right until the midnight
deadline ordered by the court, with the speaker of the assembly — a Khan
loyalist — resigning at the last minute.
The session
restarted after midnight with a replacement, and the vote was finally held.
Khan’s Tehreek-e-Insaf
(PTI) lawmakers stormed out, but the no-confidence motion passed with 174 votes
in the 342-seat assembly.
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