LAHORE: The arduous political uncertainty came to an end around midnight when the lower house of parliament convened for a daylong session to vote on a no-confidence motion, culminating in the dismissal of Imran Khan, Pakistan’s 22nd prime minister, who became the country’s first chief executive to be removed from office after losing a majority in the National Assembly.
Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, which had ruled the country for more than three and a half years, had been fighting to maintain power as its partners abandoned it by joining forces with opposition groups opposed to the government.
Despite Pakistan’s history of political unrest, no prime minister has ever been ousted from office by a no-confidence motion.
Despite decades of direct military rule and turbulent civilian governments, the country has managed to avoid the ouster of its chief executive through a vote of no-confidence for more than seven decades, despite the fact that numerous people have been ousted from office in various ways.
Although Article 95 of the Constitution has been invoked in the past to allow the opposition to dispute the premier’s claim to power if they have a majority in parliament, the opposition’s recent triumph is unusual.
Nawaz Sharif had moved a no-confidence motion against then-prime minister Benazir Bhutto in 1989, but she had won with 125 votes to the opposition’s 107.
Similarly, in 2006, Shaukat Aziz was re-elected as Prime Minister after the opposition’s attempt to depose him failed with only 136 votes out of the required 171.
When this motion was filed against the government in March, the opposition had a sizable following, as several members of the ruling party openly defied it, causing the government to invoke constitutional articles to quell dissent.
When key coalition partners, particularly the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) and the Balochistan Awami Party (BAP), departed from the ruling alliance, the importance of dissenting members was diminished.
Later, the government dismissed the no-confidence motion in the lower house, citing threats to the country’s sovereignty, before Imran announced the dismissal of the National Assembly, sticking to its narrative of the opposition being complicit in an alleged foreign conspiracy for regime change in Pakistan.
However, it was the Supreme Court’s (SC) decision reversing the deputy speaker’s ruling and the premier’s following action that allowed the motion to be tabled and voted on.
In Pakistan, no prime minister has served out their constitutionally allotted tenure. The country’s first prime minister was assassinated, and throughout the next seven decades, some of the country’s leaders were deposed by direct military involvement, presidential orders, or court rulings.
