The son of Pakistan’s new prime minister Shehbaz Sharif took over as leader of Punjab, the country’s richest and most populous region, on Saturday, further consolidating his family’s hold on power.
Nepotism and the placement of relatives in important positions is a long tradition in this country of 220 million inhabitants where power is essentially shared by two families, the Sharif and the Bhutto.
The two clans united once earlier this month to oust former cricketer Imran Khan, an outsider elected in 2018 on a pledge to end corruption in the country.
The popular support he enjoyed was gradually erased in the face of the country’s economic hardship. In early April, parliament ousted him in a vote of no confidence before electing 70-year-old Shehbaz Sharif.
At the end of a month of political crisis, Hamza Shehbaz Sharif, 47, took office on Saturday as head of the Punjab provincial government, the electoral stronghold of the party led by his father, the Pakistan Muslim League (PML -NOT) .
He was elected by the provincial assembly, but the region’s governor, a supporter of Imran Khan, refused to invest in him until the intervention of the region’s Supreme Court.
Like other members of his family, including former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who remained in power for three terms, Hamza Sharif has been targeted by cases of corruption and money laundering.
A few days ago, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, son of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, assassinated in 2007, was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs in the new government.
Mr. Bhutto, also the son of former President Asif Ali Zardari and grandson of former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was hanged in 1979, thus becoming, at the age of 33, one of the youngest foreign ministers in the world.
Since being ousted from power, Mr Khan has taken to the streets with his supporters to try to force the government to hold elections before the scheduled October 2023 date.
Source: Radio-Canada
