The Sharifs and Bhutto families have been in talks to form a government.

Pakistan’s two main family-controlled parties have hit a roadblock in talks to form a new government as they cannot agree on who will become prime minister in a coalition aimed at blocking jailed former leader Imran Khan.

Both Sharif and the Bhutto family want their candidate for the top job, local media reported on Monday. Shirley Rehman, a senior leader of Bilawal Bhutto Zardari’s Pakistan People’s Party, said the party would set up a committee “to negotiate with other parties.”

The development suggests that forming a government may take weeks. The day before, Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz chief Shehbaz Sharif said on X that the tribes “agreed in principle to save the country from political instability”.

The Sharifs and Bhutto families have been in talks to form a government since Imran Khan’s candidate ran as an independent in a bid to get the most seats in the election but failed to secure an outright majority. Over the weekend, Bhutto Zardari’s PPP held two meetings with three-time Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s Muslim League-Sharif faction.

Details of the discussions were not made public, but local media reported that the Muslim League wanted Nawaz or his brother Shehbaz to lead the government. The People’s Party, which came third in the polls, wants 35-year-old Bhutto Zardari, the son of assassinated former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, to be prime minister, saying he would be a leader in a country where more than 60 percent of the population lives in poverty. The new face of the state. 30.

Any alliance between the two parties would stymie Khan’s candidacy, and Khan’s strong showing underscores the former cricket star’s enduring popularity and voters’ disapproval of the current state of Pakistani politics represented by Sharif and Bhutto’s parties and a powerful military of disappointment. Khan’s party has alleged fraud in the election, and there have been sporadic protests across the country.

For investors, any delay in forming a government would create further uncertainty for an economy facing multiple challenges. The inflation rate is 28%, the highest in Asia, making it difficult for people to make ends meet. A nine-month International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout is set to expire in March, Pakistan’s 23rd since independence in 1947, meaning any new leader will have to negotiate a new deal Negotiate.

Pakistan’s benchmark stock index fell 2.8% on Monday after falling 1.8% on Friday.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)