Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) President Shehbaz Sharif was elected the nation’s 23rd prime minister on Monday after the lawmakers of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf boycotted voting and decided to resign from the National Assembly.
The 70-year-old cancer survivor is the younger brother of the party supremo and thrice-elected prime minister Nawaz Sharif.
He has served three times as Punjab’s chief minister. He previously held the post from 1997-1999, and then again from 2008-2013 and then from 2013-2018, making him the longest-serving chief minister of Punjab.
Most recently, he was the leader of the opposition in the National Assembly during the PTI’s tenure.
Shehbaz was first elected as an MPA to the Punjab Assembly in 1988. In 1990, he chose to run for a National Assembly seat, returning as an MNA. However, in 1993, he again stood for a provincial assembly seat and became leader of the opposition in the Punjab Assembly. His term ended in 1996 when the assemblies were dissolved.
After his win in the 1997 election, Shehbaz earned the opportunity to serve the largest province of the country for the first time and remained its chief minister until Musharraf’s military coup in 1999.
Following his return from nearly a decade-long exile, Shehbaz became chief minister of Punjab for the second time after the PML-N won the majority number of seats in the province in the 2008 election.
The Metro Bus projects in Punjab are frequently touted as his biggest achievements.
In 2018, Shehbaz contested election on multiple NA seats but won NA-132 (Lahore) only. He also won two Punjab Assembly seats (PP-164 and PP-165).
Eventually, he retained the NA-132 seat and was nominated by the PML-N and other opposition parties as their nominee for the prime minister but lost the contest to Imran Khan, who bagged 176 votes compared to Shehbaz’s 96.
On September 28, 2020, Shehbaz was arrested by the National Accountability Bureau on charges of money laundering. He was released on bail in the case by Lahore High Court on April 14, 2021.
