Pakistan election: coalition against Imran Khan says deal reached to form government

Imran Khan’s political rivals have announced details of a coalition agreement, naming Shehbaz Sharif as their joint candidate for prime minister amid continuing concerns about the legitimacy of the recent elections.

Khan’s rivals said at a news conference of party leaders late on Tuesday that they had secured the required majority of votes to form a coalition government. The parliament will elect Sharif of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) as the new prime minister when the inaugural session of the National Assembly is convened later this month, the party leaders said.

The much-awaited announcement follows days of talks among the leadership of the PML-N, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and other parties who did not gain enough seats to govern on their own after the 8 February vote.

Candidates aligned with Khan won the most seats in the parliamentary elections but not enough to form a government.

After the announcement, Khan’s Tehreek-e-Insaf party (PTI), accused the rival parties of stealing their mandate to rule.

Sharif, the brother of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, is himself a former prime minister, who replaced Imran Khan when he was ousted through a no-confidence vote in parliament in 2022. Since then, Khan has been convicted of several offences in what his supporters call politically motivated moves to keep him out of office.

The PML-N and PPP also said the country’s former President Asif Ali Zardari of the PPP will be the joint candidate for the office of the president when the new parliament and all the four provincial legislatures elect the successor of the outgoing President Arif Ali in the coming weeks.

Hours earlier on Tuesday, Khan’s PTI party asked for the resignation of the head of Pakistan’s Election Commission, Sikandar Sultan Raja, for allegedly failing to conduct the elections in a free and fair manner. Khan’s party claims the victories of dozens of its candidates were converted into defeats, a charge the elections oversight body denies.

Though Khan’s candidates won 93 out of 265 National Assembly seats in the elections, it was not enough to form a government. Sharif’s PML-N and Zardari’s PPP won 75 and 54 seats respectively.

Khan is serving multiple prison terms after being sentenced to a total of 31 years in prison on charges of corruption, revealing official secrets and marriage law violations in late January and early February during trials at a prison in Rawalpindi.

The surprisingly strong showing for Khan’s party in the recent elections were a shock for Nawaz Sharif, who had earlier been marked out as the powerful security establishment’s preferred candidate. Shehbaz Sharif, his younger brother, thanked his allies for agreeing to choose him as their joint candidate for prime minister.