Islamabad. The crucial session of Pakistan’s Parliament was convened on Saturday in line with the Supreme Court’s decision in which the proceedings to decide the fate of Prime Minister Imran Khan were adjourned several times. With this, the possibility of voting on the no-confidence motion in it seems remote before the end of the day.
The opposition parties need the support of 172 members in the 342-member House to remove Prime Minister Khan. Opposition parties have garnered excessive support with the help of dissidents from cricketer-turned-politician Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party and some allies of the ruling coalition.
Khan, who came to power in 2018 with a promise to create a ‘Naya Pakistan’, has been beset by claims of economic mismanagement as his government falters on filling up foreign exchange reserves and reducing double-digit inflation. He apparently also lost the military’s support for his refusal to support the appointment of the ISI chief last year. He eventually agreed, but this soured his relationship with the military.
For more than half of its 75 years of existence in Pakistan, the coup-prone country has been ruled by the military and has so far dominated matters of security and foreign policy. Khan wanted to keep Lt Gen Faiz Hameed as ISI chief but the army high command transferred him by appointing him as Corps Commander in Peshawar. Interestingly, no Pakistani Prime Minister has completed five years in his tenure.
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After the decision of the top court, the important session of the House began at 10:30 am (11 am IST) and since then the session has been adjourned thrice for one reason or the other.
After the court overruled the deputy speaker’s decision, Leader of Opposition in the National Assembly, the lower house of parliament, described Thursday as a historic day and said the apex court’s decision has made the country’s future “bright”. .
Meanwhile, the Khan government on Saturday challenged the Supreme Court’s decision to declare unconstitutional the decision to dismiss the no-confidence motion against the prime minister by filing a review petition. (agency)