Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan became the first US Prime Minister to be ousted by a vote of no confidence. Mr Khan, who was defiant “till the last ball”, was gracefully ousted shortly after midnight after much drama in the day-long Pakistan Assembly.
On the other hand, Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Party nominated Shah Mahmood Qureshi as their candidate. The National Assembly will go with the new Prime Minister tomorrow.
The Joint Opposition – a rainbow of socialist, liberal and radical spiritual events – secured the lead of 174 participants in the 342-member assembly, more than the 172 required to oust the prime minister.
Opposition PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari congratulated the people of Pakistan. “Democracy has been under attack for the past three years. Welcome to puran (old) Pakistan,” he said, mocking Imran Khan’s ballot pitch for “naya (new) Pakistan”. Democracy is a golden revenge, he added.
Local news reports showed a peak of political unrest in Islamabad as a no-confidence vote got under way after a drawn-out, dramatic assembly session. Amid high drama, the Speaker and Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly resigned before the courtroom cut-off date for the vote. The Supreme Court and the Islamabad High Court opened at midnight in anticipation of the contempt hearing. Prime Minister Khan defiantly hinted at the cabinet meeting that he would not resign.
A detention van reached the assembly amid speculation that the speaker and deputy speaker would be arrested if the vote was not held by midnight as directed by the Supreme Court. Security was beefed up at airports and a warning was issued that no senior state official or authority would be honored to enter the US without a No Objection Certificate (NOC).
Separately, the Imran Khan-led Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf government filed a review petition in the Supreme Court challenging his election to declare the Deputy Speaker’s verdict to dismiss the no-confidence motion against the Prime Minister as unconstitutional. However, the petition was yet to be filed as the courtroom officials were no longer handling it during the receipt period due to the early closing of Ramazan.
Urging the people of Pakistan to protect the country’s sovereignty, Prime Minister Imran Khan called for a night-time curfew and urged people to take to the streets and protest peacefully against an “imported government”.
Making sensational claims of a foreign conspiracy, PM Khan has claimed that foreign powers are trying to topple his authorities and Pakistan’s lawmakers are being traded like sheep to accomplish this. “We got to comprehend that US diplomats were meeting our people. Then we received to recognize about the whole plan,” he said, adding that he is not at the liberty to publicly launch all the details owing to national protection concerns. The US has bluntly rejected these allegations saying there is “absolutely no truth” to these claims.