Imran wins confidence vote boycotted by opposition

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Imran Khan won a vote of confidence on Saturday in a National Assembly session boycotted by the opposition, days after his party lost a key Senate seat to a Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) candidate.

Ruling party and opposition activists clashed briefly outside Parliament ahead of the vote, with Geo News showing a shoe being thrown at Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N)’s former interior minister Ahsan Iqbal.

Khan secured 178 votes in the 342-seat National Assembly through an open ballot, boycotted by the main opposition parties. The opposition alliance chose to stay away from the process and watched the proceedings from the Sindh House.

Imran Khan required 172 votes to win the confidence vote. The ruling coalition had 181 members but after the resignation of Faisal Vawda, the number strength dropped to 180, while the opposition coalition has 160 members in the House. National Assembly Speaker Asad Qaiser announced the result and said Imran Khan became the Prime Minister of Pakistan after securing 176 votes in August 2018, and, “MashaAllah today he has got 178 votes.” The House erupted in jubilation by the members, who shouted slogans: “Prime Minister Imran Khan”.

The Prime Minister arrived at the National Assembly before the commencement of the session. The proceedings, with Speaker Asad Qaiser in the chair, began with the recitation of verses from the Holy Quran, and the National Anthem was played.

This is the first time that a Prime Minister has gone for a vote of confidence after the passage of the 18th Constitutional Amendment. Foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi tabled a resolution in the House, and the Speaker read out the details of the process for the members.

Bells were rung for five minutes and the Speaker read out the resolution, triggering a prolonged thumping of desks.

The vote followed the contentious results of Wednesday’s election to the Senate, whose members are chosen by provincial parliaments and lawmakers from the Lower House.

In what the opposition says is a sign of growing ruptures within his ruling PTI, Khan’s finance minister Hafeez Sheikh lost his seat to PDM candidate Yousuf Raza Gilani, suggesting some members of the party had switched their loyalty. Khan had accused the opposition of horse-trading and buying some of his party’s parliamentarians in a bid to ward off graft investigations.

Speaking following the confidence vote, the Prime Minister accused the opposition parties of “plundering national wealth” during their times in office. “This was a decade of darkness used by the two parties to ruin national institutions,” he added.

Prime Minister Khan also said corruption is the biggest problem for the country, and his government will support the judiciary and the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) to secure convictions for corrupt politicians.

He said Pakistan was not made for “billionaires like Nawaz Sharif and Asif Ali Zardari”. He said the latter is “known as a corrupt person” and the former was declared a proclaimed offender after he left the country “after looting the public wealth”. “Nawaz Sharif, who went abroad on medical grounds, is now making political plans and delivering speeches from there,” he added.

Khan said both Nawaz Sharif and Asif Ali Zardari, while in government, “plundered public money” and took the country’s debt from Rs6,000 billion to Rs30,000 billion. He said Gilani (as prime minister) “refused to write a letter to the Swiss authorities on the court’s orders for the recovery of $60 billion stashed in the bank accounts of Switzerland”.

Now the “thieves and corrupt elements” were trying to put pressure on him to get an NRO (National Reconciliation Ordinance), but he would continue his fight against them, he pledged. The Prime Minister thanked the PTI and allies for their support.