Pakistan’s Shehbaz Sharif submits nomination to become new PM | News

Younger brother of three-times Pakistan prime minister Nawaz Sharif, Shehbaz Sharif, 70, led the opposition efforts that toppled Imran Khan.

Pakistan opposition politician Shehbaz Sharif has submitted his nomination to be the country’s next prime minister.

The younger brother of three-times prime minister Nawaz Sharif, 70-year-old Shehbaz led the opposition efforts in parliament that eventually toppled now former Prime Minister Imran Khan in the early hours of Sunday morning.

After submitting his nomination to the legislature on Sunday, Shehbaz said Khan’s departure was a chance for a new beginning in Pakistan. Shehbaz, the centrist Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) party chief, is widely expected to be named the country’s new prime minister on Monday.

“A new dawn has started … This alliance will rebuild Pakistan,” Shehbaz told parliament on Sunday. His first tasks will be to repair relations with the powerful military as well as the United States, and tend to a faltering economy.

Khan had antagonised the US throughout his tenure, welcoming the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan last year and more recently accusing Washington of being behind the attempt to remove him. Washington dismissed the accusation.

Khan’s party has also nominated the former foreign minister as a prime ministerial candidate, saying their members of parliament would resign en masse should he lose, potentially creating the need for urgent by-elections for their seats.

The first Pakistani prime minister to be removed by a no-confidence vote, Khan had clung on for almost a week after a united opposition first tried to remove him.

On Sunday, he repeated allegations that a foreign conspiracy was behind a conspiracy of regime change in Pakistan.

“The freedom struggle begins again today,” he said via his Twitter account, which is followed by more than 15 million and still describes him as prime minister of Pakistan in his biography section.