The two major Pakistan parties that joined forces to oust Imran Khan as prime minister in 2022 have said they would form a new coalition to rule the country after an election last week failed to produce a decisive winner.
At a joint press conference, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) said they would join with smaller parties to form the next government.
“The parties present here are almost two-thirds of the house that has been elected,” said PML-N president Shehbaz Sharif, alongside leaders of the PPP and two other groups.
Mr Sharif, a former prime minister of Pakistan, will be a candidate to head the country’s next government, a spokeswoman for the party said on social media.
Last week’s election returned a hung parliament in which no party commands a majority.
However, the PML-N party and former foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardai’s PPP have enough seats to form a new coalition government.
Earlier, Mr Zardai, the son of assasssinated former premier Benazir Bhutto, gave an incidation it would support Mr Sharif’s party, five days after Thursday’s vote gave a split verdict and sparked worries of fresh instability.
PML-N is the largest recognised party with 80 seats and PPP is second with 54.
Independent candidates backed by jailed former premier Khan won 92 seats, making them the largest group, but they cannot form a government on their own, having run as individuals and not a party, and have ruled out alliances with PML-N or PPP.
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Mr Zardari said Mr Khan’s independents and PML-N had more numbers than his party but Mr Khan had ruled out joining forces with PPP.
“That leaves us with the PML-N which is the only political party in the National Assembly which has reached out to the PPP and invited us to join their government,” he told reporters.
