Pakistan’s parliament ousted Prime Minister Imran Khan on Saturday after the leader lost a no-confidence motion voted against him after weeks of political turmoil.
Acting Speaker of the House, Sardar Ayaz Sadiq, indicated that the motion passed after obtaining a majority of 174 votes out of a total of 342 seats.
An alliance of opposition parties filed the lawsuit against Khan in mid-March, saying he had lost his parliamentary majority after more than a dozen defections from his party, raising the risk of political turmoil in the South Asian country that has nuclear weapons.
A former cricket champion, Khan was elected prime minister in August 2018, after a campaign marred by accusations of manipulation by the Pakistani army, a political protagonist in the country that has already been through several coups d’état. The opposition accuses Khan of mismanagement of the economy and foreign policy – ​​he denies it.
Kahn appealed to lawmakers who switched sides to return to the ruling party. “Go back, you will be forgiven,” he said at a public event in northwest Pakistan. “As a father forgives his children.”​
On several occasions, Kahn has accused the United States of meddling in Pakistan’s internal affairs, with the support of the opposition, which he calls a traitor, and of wanting his resignation because it refuses to align itself with American positions on Russia and China. .
Oppositionists and political analysts say the prime minister has fallen out with the top military, whose support is essential for any party to reach power. Both Khan and the military deny it.
Since gaining independence in 1947, Pakistan has suffered four military coups d’état and has spent more than three decades ruled by the army. No Prime Minister of Pakistan has completed his term to date.
According to the Constitution, the Speaker of the Lower House of Parliament is required to convene the session 14 days after receiving the request for a motion. Thus, the vote should have taken place on March 21, but the date was postponed to the 25th due to a conference of Islamic countries in Islamabad that week.
However, a last-minute maneuver by the deputy speaker of Parliament, linked to Khan, rejected the vote on the motion as unconstitutional, as he said it was a “foreign interference”.
Then, the President of the Republic, Arif Alvi, another ally of Kahn, dissolved Parliament, which automatically provoked the call of early parliamentary elections in 90 days.
But, in a new twist, the Supreme Court on Thursday annulled the dissolution of the Legislature, and ordered that the motion of censure be finally voted on.
The Supreme Court is an independent body, but human rights activists denounce the influence of the military and the administration in its decisions.
