Pakistan: Candidates of former PM Khan to merge with 2 other parties

Independent winning candidates backed by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-insaf (PTI) party of incarcerated former Prime Minister Imran Khan will merge with two religiopolitical parties to claim stakes in federal and provincial governments, the PTI announced on Tuesday.

Party spokesman Rauf Hassan told a news conference that candidates supported by his party will ‘form a coalition’ with Majlis Wahdat-e-muslimeen, a Shia Muslim political group, at the federal level and in Punjab province.

It will also merge with the mainstream religiopolitical party Jamaat-e-islami in northwestern Khyber Phaktunkhwa province, Hassan added.

In general elections last week, no single party in the South

Asian nation was able to win enough seats to form a government on its own, triggering a flurry of coalition talks between the sides.

In the overall results of February 8 general elections, independent candidates, mostly backed by Khan’s PTI party, won the majority of seats - 101 - in the National Assembly, the lower house of Parliament.

However, they do not have the required numbers to form a government on their own.

The two other main parties, ex-premier Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League - Nawaz (PML-N) and Bilawal Bhutto Zardari’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) have started talks for a possible coalition government.

They won 75 and 54 out of the 266 direct National Assembly seats, respectively.

The National Assembly has a total of 336 seats, with 60 reserved for women and 10 for religious minorities.

These are proportionately distributed among parties according to their election performance. Any party that wants its leader as prime minister will need 169 votes in the house.

A party requires 169 seats to form the government with a simple majority, which is currently impossible for any of the mainstream parties without the support of smaller groups.

To form the central government, the PML-N is trying to woo the MQM-P, a regional party mainly based in the country’s commercial capital Karachi, which has 17 lawmakers in the new parliament.

JUI, a mainstream religiopolitical party, and PML-Q, a splinter faction of PML-N, have won only four and three seats in the National Assembly, respectively, but their votes will still be decisive for the formation of governments, mainly in the southwestern Balochistan and Pakistan’s largest Punjab province.

In Balochistan particularly, a coalition government is usually formed with the help of multiple smaller parties.

However, in southern Sindh and northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) provinces,

Two other main parties, Nawaz Sharif’s PML-N and Bilawal Bhutto Zardari’s PPP have started talks for a possible coalition government

the PPP and the Pti-backed independents are in a comfortable position to form the provincial governments for a fourth and third consecutive term, respectively. In KP, PTI affiliates have won a two-thirds majority, but need to join a party to form the government.