Pakistan: Imran Khan Picks Omar Ayub As PM Nominee

Pakistan’s jailed former prime minister Imran Khan has picked one of his party’s leaders as PM candidate.

Omar Ayub Khan will run against the candidate of Imran Khan’s rivals, who have agreed to a coalition.

Khan-backed independents unexpectedly won the most seats in last week’s election, but they did not have enough seats to form a government.

This has led to days of deal-making as the constitution requires the formation of a government by 29 February.

A senior leader of Mr Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) party, Asad Qaiser, announced Mr Ayub as his pick for PM after meeting with the former premier in prison.

Members of Pakistan’s National Assembly will elect the new speaker and 56-year-old Mr Ayub will face off against the nominee of former PM Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) and Bilawal Bhutto Zardari’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), who joined forces earlier this week.

Mr Ayub is on the run from criminal charges, including those related to riots that followed Imran Khan’s arrest last year. But that does not disqualify him from seeking the PM post.

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If elected PM, Mr Ayub said his top priority is to free political prisoners. He won last week as an independent backed by PTI.

He is the grandson of Mohamed Ayub Khan, a military dictator and Pakistan’s president from 1958 to 1969.

With the PPP’s support, Mr Sharif on Wednesday put forward his brother Shehbaz as the PML-N’s PM candidate.

The vote for Pakistan’s next prime minister will take place after all new members of the National Assembly take their oaths, and the speaker and deputy speaker have been elected.

Independent candidates – a majority affiliated with Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) – won 93 of the 265 National Assembly seats that were contested in last Thursday’s election. The PML-N won 75 seats while the PPP came third with 54 seats.

BBC