Shehbaz Sharif to be coalition candidate for next Pakistan PM

Former Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif will be the nominee for Pakistan’s next premier 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, Reuters reported.

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 beside Shehbaz Sharif and leaders of other political parties.

Earlier, Zardari’s son and fellow PPP leader, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, had laid conditions on backing the Sharif-led coalition, saying they would support them in electing the prime minister but would not join the government.

However, the alliance has ended uncertainty over government formation for now, five days after the Feb. 8 vote gave a split verdict and sparked worries of fresh instability.

Independent candidates backed by jailed former premier Imran Khan have won 92 seats, making them the largest group, but they cannot form a government on their own, having run as individuals and not a party, and have ruled out alliances with PML-N or PPP.