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PPP loyalist Raja Parvez is New Pak PM

Islamabad. Raja Parvez Ashraf, the former utilities minister whose tenure was teainted by scandal,  was on Friday elected by the National Assembly as Pakistan’s new Prime Minister.
61-year-old loyalist of the Bhutto family was pitched forked. into the hot seat  after the original choice Makhdoom Shahbuddin faced an arrest warrant on Thursday. But the new leader himself is dogged by corruption charges relating to his tenure as power minister.
Ashraf, a unanimous candidate of the PPP and its coalition partners, received 211 votes while Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz’s Sardar Mehtab Abbasi got 89. The third candidate, Jamiat-ul-Ulema Islam chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman, withdrew his candidacy and stayed neutral.

The new PM may immediately come under pressure from the supreme court to launch corruption inquiry against Zardari. Soon after being elected, Ashraf vowed to hold free and fair elections and sought the opposition’s support for this. He promised to address the ongoing energy crisis in the country and stabilise the restive Balochistan province. Ashraf also promised “peaceful co-existence ” with India and Afghanistan
Ashraf, who was elected to the National Assembly from Gujar Khan constituency in Rawalpindi district – both in 2002 and 2008 – served twice in the cabinet of Gilani.
He resigned from Gilani’s cabinet in February 2011 after allegations of corruption in power projects.

The instability of the country’s politics comes at a time of unparalleled tension in the uneasy alliance with the US as well as severe electricity shortages that have seen many parts of rural Pakistan go without power for more than 18 hours a day, in sweltering summer temperatures of more than 40 degrees centigrade.
The domestic and foreign debts of the country make an approach to the International Monetary Fund for additional loans a certainty within the next year.
The troubled relations with the US were cast into focus by a comment by Leon Panetta, US defence secretary, in an interview with Reuters on Thursday. Mr Panetta ruled out an unconditional apology to Pakistan for the death of 26 soldiers in a drone attack last year and said it was “time to move on.”

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