After his party took control of Punjab, the nation’s most populous province, Imran Khan, a former Pakistani prime minister, reiterated his call for early elections on Monday.
In the by-election for Punjab, 20 seats were up for grabs. After he was fired in April as a result of a vote of no confidence, it was considered as a test of the former international cricket star’s popularity.
He received 15 votes for his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, Shehbaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) received 4, and one voter cast an independent ballot.The vote on Sunday was viewed as a stand-in for the national elections that must be held by October of next year, despite the fact that Khan has been actively pushing for an earlier election across the country since being removed.
After the results of the Punjab elections were announced, Khan tweeted early on Monday, “The only way forward from here is to hold free and transparent elections.”
“Any other course will only result in heightened political ambiguity and escalating economic turmoil.”
Since his removal, Khan has drawn sizable crowds to his rallies while making meandering speeches in which he alleges a US-led conspiracy forced the Pakistani government onto the country.Despite the fact that the majority of analysts concur that Sharif inherited the country’s economic issues, which were slightly mitigated last week by an arrangement the with International Monetary Fund (IMF) to restart a bailout program, he also attributed the present administration’s high inflation.
The outcome in Punjab was brought on by the country’s current economic problems, which include spending over half of its GDP to settle heavy foreign debt.
Fuel subsidies were eliminated by Sharif in order to meet IMF criteria for the continuance of a $7.2 billion loan package, which in turn caused fuel prices to rise by more than 50% in less than two months.
