Pakistan is a step closer to getting a new government after a potential prime ministerial candidate pledged support for his main rival.
Bilawal Bhutto Zardari on Tuesday dropped out of the race for the top job and said his party would support any candidate proposed by the Nawaz Sharif-led Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz. The resolution sets the stage for a new loan program from the International Monetary Fund.
“If this house fails to elect a prime minister and it fails to form a government, then we will have to go back for re-elections and this will lead to another perpetuation of this political crisis,” Bhutto, 35, said in a briefing Tuesday. “Pakistan Peoples Party will not accept ministries in the government and will support the government on an issue-to-issue basis.”
The decision means that the Sharif’s will lead negotiations with the IMF. Pakistan’s former prime minister Shehbaz Sharif said earlier that the nation will need to secure a new loan program at the earliest, indicating the new administration will have to hurry to tackle the country’s economic crisis.Pakistan’s current $3 billion IMF program is set to end in April and the nation faces $25 billion of external debt payments in the fiscal year starting July, about three times its foreign-exchange reserves. Sharif, who was prime minister from 2022 to last year, was crucial to break a deadlock and secure the nation’s current IMF program after the country came close to bankruptcy last summer.
Nawaz, Shehbaz’s elder brother and three-time former prime minister, returned from exile late last year to galvanize his party before the election. The party has still not announced its candidate for prime minister.
The development is seen as a breakthrough after the elections had seen no political party achieve an outright majority. The two main family-controlled political parties have been negotiating to form a government after Imran Khan’s candidates, running as independents, defied the odds by taking the most seats in the election but fell short of a majority.
Khan’s party has decided not to engage with the main political parties but is still deciding how it can trump the Sharif group and form a government. It has also alleged vote-rigging in the election and there have been scattered protests across the country.
