Shehbaz Sharif Elected New Prime Minister, Khan and PTI Members Resigned En Masse

Manas Dasgupta

NEW DELHI, April 11: The Pakistan Muslim League – Nawaz (PML-N) leader and the joint opposition candidate Shehbaz Sharif was elected as the new Prime Minister of Pakistan through a voting in the country’s National Assembly after the members of the hitherto ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) members led by the deposed prime minister Imran Khan en masse submitted resignation from Parliament effectively ruling out a contest.

PTI’s Shah Mohammad Qureshi, the foreign minister in the ousted Khan cabinet, had also submitted his nomination for the prime minister’s post but en mass resignation by his party members before the election process began ended his prospects.

After being elected as PM, Sharif said good has prevailed over evil and vowed to “resign and go home if conspiracy is proved in letter controversy,” while Khan justifying resignations of his party members said he would not sit in the assemblies with ‘thieves’. “A man who has one corruption case of 16 billion rupees and another corruption case of 8 billion rupees against him…for that person to be selected and elected as the Prime Minister, there cannot be a bigger insult to the country. We are resigning from the National Assembly,” Imran Khan was quoted as saying by PTI’s official Twitter account.

Ahead of the voting, Khan-led PTI boycotted the procedure. Qureshi himself announced the boycott of voting to elect new Pakistan premier. The PTI lawmakers resigned from the Parliament and staged a walkout.

A large number of PTI supporters held a protest rally in Lahore’s Liberty Chowk against the ouster of Imran Khan through a no-confidence motion moved by the Opposition. The charged PTI supporters, including women and children, showed their solidarity with Khan during the rally that started at 9 pm on Sunday and lasted till 3 am on Monday. Big gatherings were also reported from other parts of the Punjab province, including Faisalabad, Multan, Gujranwala, Vehari, Jehlum and Gujrat districts. Islamabad and Karachi also witnessed major gatherings of PTI supporters.

The joint Opposition – a rainbow of socialist, liberal and radically religious parties – named 70-year-old Sharif for the premier’s post. The PTI members while resigning from the National Assembly decided to launch a movement against the new government terming it as the “imported government of thieves and thugs.”

Confirming the decision about mass resignation, the former Interior Minister Sheikh Rasheed said sitting in the assembly would “strengthen” Sharif and therefore it had been decided to submit their resignation from the National Assembly. “Imran Khan supported my suggestion during the parliamentary party meeting,” he said and added that Khan would visit Peshawar on Wednesday.

“Imran Khan will give a call to people every Sunday to come out against the foreign conspiracy,” Rasheed said. PTI Member of National Assembly (MNA) Murad Saeed was the first member of the party who submitted his resignation to the Speaker of the National Assembly. Earlier in the day, the PTI held a parliamentary party meeting at the Parliament House in Islamabad. The meeting was chaired by Imran Khan.

In a historic first for Pakistan, Imran Khan was ousted as the prime minister of Pakistan from office through a no-confidence motion after the National Assembly debated on the matter for more than 12 hours and the political situation in the country took a critical turn Saturday night.

The session was chaired by Ayaz Sadiq — a member of the panel of chairs — after speaker Asad Qaiser and the deputy speaker Qasim Surti resigned from their posts when the Pakistan Supreme Court insisted on carrying out the voting despite the motion’s earlier rejection by the deputy speaker.

“174 members have recorded their votes in favour of the resolution, consequently the resolution for the vote on no-confidence against Mr Imran Khan, the prime minister of Pakistan, has been passed by a majority,” Ayaz Sadiq announced after the process of voting was completed.

Meanwhile, a top Pakistani court on Monday dismissed a petition to register a treason case against Imran Khan and various ministers in the deposed cabinet saying it was inadmissible. Chief Justice Athar Minallah of the Islamabad High Court delivered a reserved verdict during which he also fined the petitioner Maulvi Iqbal Haider Rs100,000.

The three time former prime minister and elder brother of the new prime minister, Nawaz Sharif is expected to return to Pakistan from London next month after Eid, a senior PML-N leader has said, amid a whirlwind of political developments that have embroiled the country following Imran Khan’s ignominious ouster from power.

Mian Javed Latif said a decision on PML-N supremo and the three-time prime minister Sharif’s anticipated return will be discussed with the coalition partners.

Several corruption cases had been launched by the government of ex-prime minister Khan against the 72-year-old supremo of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz since his ouster from the office by the Supreme Court in July 2017 in the Panama Papers case.

Sharif in November 2019 left for London after the Lahore High Court granted him a four-week permission allowing him to go abroad for his treatment. He had given an undertaking to the Lahore High Court to return to Pakistan, citing his record to face the process of law and justice within four weeks or as soon as he is declared healthy and fit to travel by doctors. Sharif was also given bail in the Al-Azizia Mills corruption case in which he was serving seven-year imprisonment in Lahore’s Kot Lakhpat jail.