After a week’s delay, and twists and turns, Shahbaz Sharif has been voted as the new Prime Minister of Pakistan in the National Assembly. Mr Sharif, who won a majority of 174 votes in the 342-seat assembly, had to wait for days because of Prime Minister Imran Khan’s efforts to scrap the no-confidence motion (NCM) process. While the opposition led by Mr Sharif and the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) and the Pakistan People’s Party presented a no-confidence motion on 8 March, the debate was only scheduled for 3 April by the Speaker of the National Assembly, Mr Asad Qaiser. Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party. In the assembly, Mr Kaiser’s deputy dismissed the NCM on charges of “foreign conspiracy”, after which Mr Khan resigned, asking the president to dissolve the assembly and call for elections. The Supreme Court stepped in to end the widespread crisis, and reversed the Speaker’s actions. Even when the assembly was reconstituted under strict court orders on 9 April, the Speaker allowed the debate on the angle of “foreign conspiracy” to drag on for hours, before ousting Mr Khan. The vote was finally allowed only at midnight. Saturday. The ruling PTI was unwilling to give up power, and even proposed its own candidate, Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, before Mr Sharif was elected to resign from the assembly. Mr Khan, who has consistently alleged his ouster was the result of an “international regime-change conspiracy”, has now vowed to take his fight “to the people”, and to spend the rest of the assembly’s term. Likely, since August 2023 ended in a political campaign against Mr. Sharif.
Mr Khan’s defeat marks the first time he has won a trust vote against a sitting Pakistani prime minister. However, stepping down as prime minister is nothing new in a country that has often seen the military establishment dominate any prime minister who challenges his power. In this case, the military took no apparent action, but it is clear that tensions between Islamabad and Rawalpindi were a key factor when the opposition decided to oust Mr Khan. PTI’s dangerous flirtation with religious fundamentalism didn’t help Mr Khan. Nor could he rely on street protests to protect him, especially when he was unable to prove allegations that his opponents had acted as “America’s Agents” both in the assembly and in court. There are lessons for Pakistan’s neighbourhood, too, from the consequences of Mr. Khan’s politics: polarization of politics, a reluctance to act by consensus, and blaming outside forces for domestic problems are hallmarks of autocracy, not democrats, who are offered What needs to be done is that their people are something more important than democracy in the long run.