Shehbaz Sharif elected Pak PM as Imran MPs quit en masse

ISLAMABAD, April 11 (Agencies): Pakistan lawmakers on Monday elected Shehbaz Sharif as the country's new prime minister following the weekend ouster of Imran Khan, who resigned his national assembly seat -- along with most of his party members -- ahead of the vote.

Khan was dismissed Sunday after losing a no-confidence vote, paving the way for an unlikely alliance that faces the same issues which bedevilled the cricket star-turned-politician.

Sharif, leader of the centrist Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) was the only candidate after Khan loyalist Shah Mahmood Qureshi, the former foreign minister, withdrew his candidacy and resigned his seat.

"It's a victory of righteousness, and evil has been defeated," Sharif said to cheers from lawmakers.

Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party had 155 lawmakers in the 342-seat chamber before the mass resignations, and Sharif was elected with 174 votes.

Sharif's election brings to a close a week-long constitutional confrontation that climaxed on Sunday when Khan lost a no-confidence vote.

Sharif, 70, who has a reputation domestically as an effective administrator more than as a politician, is the younger brother of three-time prime minister Nawaz Sharif. Analysts say Shehbaz, unlike Nawaz, enjoys amicable relations with Pakistan's military, which traditionally controls foreign and defence policy in the country of 220 million people. After the vote, Sharif vowed to tackle an economic malaise that has seen the rupee hit an all-time low and the central bank hike rates by its largest amount in decades last week.

"If we have to save the sinking boat, what we all need is hard work, and unity, unity and unity," he said in his maiden speech to parliament.

"We are beginning a new era of development today."

Just minutes before the vote, legislators from Khan's party resigned en masse from the lower house of parliament in protest at the expected formation of a government by his political foes.

"We are announcing we are all resigning," Shah Mahmood Qureshi, former foreign minister and vice president of Khan's party, told the assembly. The mass resignations will require fresh by-elections in well over 100 seats.