Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan was removed from office via a no-confidence vote in the early hours of Sunday after a day of high drama, becoming the first prime minister in the country’s history to be deported after losing the confidence of the House.
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The United Opposition – a rainbow of socialist, liberal and fundamentally religious parties – won the support of 174 members in the 342-member National Assembly, far more than the number needed to remove the prime minister in a day full of drama and numerous adjournments. . of the lower house.
No prime minister in the history of Pakistan has ever been ousted through a no-confidence motion. Khan is the first prime minister whose fate was decided through a trust vote. Earlier, two separate no-confidence motions against former prime minister Benazir Bhutto in 1989 and Shaukat Aziz in 2006 respectively had failed.
Also, no Pakistani prime minister has completed a five-year term in office.
Khan, 69, was not present in the lower house at the time of voting. MPs from his party staged a walkout during the voting. However, disgruntled PTI members remained present in the House and sat on government benches.
Khan’s removal has expedited the process of electing a new leader of the House.
The joint opposition has already named Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) president Shahbaz Sharif as the joint candidate. He can be elected prime minister by Sunday.
Shahbaz vowed that “the new government will not indulge in vendetta politics”.
“I do not want to go back to the bitterness of the past. We want to forget them and move on. We will not take revenge or do injustice, we will not send people to jail without any reason, law and justice will take it of course,” Shahbaz said. said in his speech after the declaration of the poll results.
After Shahbaz, Pakistan Peoples Party chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari entered the House and congratulated the House for passing a no-confidence motion against a prime minister for the first time in history.
The opposition filed a no-confidence motion on March 8, setting out a set of events on polling day and increasing tensions due to Khan’s insistence that he be targeted as part of a “foreign conspiracy” with cooperation. was being done. Top opposition leader.
Khan, who came to power in 2018 with a promise to create a ‘Naya Pakistan’, was troubled by claims of economic mismanagement as his government grapples with depleting foreign exchange reserves and double-digit inflation.
He also apparently lost the backing of the mighty military after refusing to support the appointment of the head of the ISI spy agency last year. He eventually agreed, but it soured his ties with the powerful military, which has ruled the coup-prone country for more than half of its 75 years of existence, and has so far ruled on matters of security and foreign policy. Used a lot of power.
Khan wanted to keep Lt Gen Faiz Hameed as spy chief but the army high command transferred him by appointing a corps commander in Peshawar.
Some coalition partners decided to part ways, while many dissidents openly disregarded their authority, with Prime Minister Khan losing a majority last month.
A special session was convened in the light of the Supreme Court’s decision, which declared unconstitutional the deputy speaker’s decision on 7 April to dismiss the no-confidence motion against Khan.
Saturday saw several twists and turns throughout Saturday, starting with the National Assembly meeting at 10:30 am but being postponed half an hour later to 12:30 pm. It resumed around 3:00 pm and it was announced that voting would take place at 8:00 pm.
But again the proceedings were adjourned twice – the last time at 9:30 to resume the proceedings at 8:00 pm. But the reorganization of the NA was delayed because the prime minister called an emergency cabinet meeting and chairman Asad Qaiser held meetings with various officials.
Finally, it started at 11:45 and Speaker Asad Qaiser announced his resignation as it was not possible for him to continue. He also nominated Ayaz Sadiq of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz to preside over the session, who immediately began the voting process.
Voting began just before the change of day but Ayaz Sadiq had to adjourn proceedings for 2 minutes to resume after the date change.
Twist in political drama
In another twist in the political drama, Prime Minister Khan called a cabinet meeting at the PM House. He got approval to share the “conspiracy sheet” with the Speaker, the President of the Senate and the Chief Justice.
Kaiser reached PM House twice to meet Khan and resigned after coming back after meeting him for the second time.
Khan also met a team of his favorite journalists, who are known to defend him on talk-shows, and rubbished rumors of any change in the army’s leadership. He told them not to resign and “will fight till the last ball”.
He also told the media persons that he was not interfering in the process of implementation of the Supreme Court’s orders of moving the no-confidence motion.
As the process of voting was getting delayed, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court became proactive and he, along with fellow judges, rushed to the court, apparently to take cognizance of the violation of the April 7 order.
Similarly, the Chief Justice of Islamabad High Court ordered his staff to open the court so that they can proceed accordingly on any issue, if required.
Geo News reported that Army Chief Qamar Javed Bajwa along with ISI chief Nadeem Ahmed Anjum met Khan.
Published on
April 10, 2022