Pakistan ousts prime minister, elects replacement

After ousting Prime Minister Imran Khan on Sunday, Pakistan’s Parliament voted Monday to elect Pakistan Muslim League party leader Shahbaz Sharif as interim prime minister until August 2023. The country’s Supreme Court reinstated Parliament last week after Khan had dissolved the legislative body to avoid a no-confidence vote he was likely to lose. But the court ruled he had no authority to do so. More than 100 lawmakers from Khan’s Justice Party resigned and walked out in protest of Khan’s ouster, giving Sharif the majority he needed to win the seat. Sharif is the brother of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who was disqualified from holding office in 2017 for financial corruption.

Why was Khan voted out? Opposition parties accused him of economic mismanagement leading to rampant inflation. He is the first Pakistani prime minister to be ousted by a no-confidence vote rather than a military intervention or court conviction. Hundreds of thousands of protestors across Pakistan took to the streets Sunday decrying Khan’s ouster.

Dig deeper: From the archives, read Leigh Jones’ report on Nawaz Sharif’s ousting after the Panama Papers scandal.