By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: Former Prime Minister Imran Khan on Saturday said his party would dissolve two provincial assemblies on December 23 to force the Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s coalition government for early elections.
“We are heading towards default and only fresh and fair polls are a solution to Pakistan’s economic problems,” Khan said in an address to the nation via a video link from his hometown Lahore.
“Next Friday, we will dissolve the Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa assemblies,” Khan said. The chief ministers of both provinces were also present alongside the other senior leaders of Khan’s Pakistan Taheek-e-Insaf (PTI) party. “We have decided, and I am thankful to the two chief ministers… And then we will prepare for the elections.”
Khan’s PTI has governments in Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa as well as in Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan. It has lawmakers in the Sindh and Balochistan assemblies also. The party lawmakers had already resigned from the National Assembly but the resignations of most of the lawmakers were not accepted.
Ousted from the office of prime minister via a parliamentary vote in April, Khan has, since, refused to recognize the government of Prime Minister Sharif and accuses it of conspiring with the military establishment and the US for his removal.
The former cricketer-turned-politician, who came to power in 2018, is the only Prime Minister to be ousted in a no-confidence vote in the parliament.
The country is facing a political crisis with Khan demanding that the government announces early votes and Prime Minister Sharif rejecting his plea for snap polls.
Khan said his party’s lawmakers would go to the National Assembly, the lower house of the parliament, and demand the speaker to accept their resignations on 123 seats after dissolving the provincial legislatures.
Khan told the nation to refrain from being disappointed, saying it was akin to “running away from our duty to society”.
PTI chief said a “lesson should be taught through elections” to the government and defeat them in such a manner “that the names of these thieves are wiped out forever”.
“We are sacrificing our two provincial governments for the sake of the country’s future… elections in the two provinces mean holding polls in almost 66 percent of the country, and so the government might as well hold general elections.”
Polls for the federal and provincial governments are held at the same time in a general election every five years in Pakistan. If the two provincial assemblies are dissolved earlier, separate polls would have to be held for them within 90 days, according to the constitution.
Meanwhile, the ruling coalition has announced bringing no-trust votes against the chief ministers of both provinces to foil PTI’s plan to dissolve the assemblies.
“Over 100 lawmakers in Punjab have signed a no-confidence motion against Parvez Elahi (chief minister) and we may submit it in the Punjab Assembly coming week,” PM Sharif’s special assistant Atta Tarar told reporters. The motions will be submitted in the coming week since Imran Khan announced the dissolution of the assembly on Friday.”
Tarar said the decision to sign no-trust motions against the chief minister and the speaker came after the directives of Prime Minister Sharif who met party leaders in Lahore.
Prime Minister Sharif said it was the “desire of someone that Pakistan gets pushed into default, but neither would it happen, nor would the PDM let it happen, InshaAllah”.
“The people who had laid land mines in the economic foundations of the country, are out to do the same in the political foundations of the country,” the prime minister said in a statement issued by his office. “The people who had hurt public confidence, were now out to dissolve assemblies,” he said.
“The political miscreants by spreading anarchy wanted to force the world not to invest in Pakistan, besides hampering the efforts for the rehabilitation of the flood-affected people,” Sharif added.
Copyright © 2021 Independent Pakistan | All rights reserved
