Pakistan’s Parliament has elected Shahbaz Sharif of the Pakistan Muslim League as the country’s new prime minister on Monday. The former opposition leader took office amid a parliamentary boycott by the party of outgoing Prime Minister Imran Khan, who has accused his political opponents of colluding with the US ahead of the no-confidence vote that led to his ousting on Sunday.
Sharif’s success comes after lawmakers in the National Assembly voted to remove Khan from office over the weekend with 174 votes; two more than the required simple majority in Pakistan’s 342-seat lower chamber of Parliament. Sharif previously served as chief minister of Punjab, whose some 110 million residents make it Pakistan’s most populous province, from 1997-1999 and again from 2008-2018.
He is the younger brother of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, who was found guilty of concealing assets in 2017, when damning revelations emerged with the Panama Papers, and has led the Pakistan Muslim League since his brother’s conviction. In 2019, the National Accountability Bureau froze 23 properties belonging to Shehbaz and his son, Hamza Sharif, accusing them of money laundering. He was indicted for money laundering in 2020 and incarcerated pending trial before his release on bail in 2021.
Sharif’s candidacy was left uncontested when rival candidate and former Pakistani FM Shah Mahmood Qureshi, favored by Khan’s Tehreek-e-Insaf (Pakistan Justice Party) former foreign minister, led a walkout and boycott of the election.