Jailed former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan’s party on Feb. 27 said that no provincial Assembly session can be called without notifying the reserved seats, a day after the Assemblies of Punjab and Sindh were summoned and the Chief Ministers were sworn-in.
Speaking to the media in Islamabad, the 71-year-old Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party leader, Barrister Gohar Khan, said the new provincial Assemblies should be convened after all the members of the House are notified, the Dawn newspaper quoted him as saying.
“The Punjab [Assembly] session was carried out in an illegal manner. The Sindh Assembly session was carried out illegally. If the National Assembly session is called, that will also be illegal because the assemblies should be convened after all the members of the House are notified,” he said.
He urged the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to notify the reserved seats for the Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC), with which his party has entered a formal agreement.
Mr. Khan’s party could not directly participate in the February 8 general elections due to the non-allotment of its iconic electoral symbol — the cricket bat. To receive the party’s share of reserved seats, candidates of the PTI — who fought as independents and won the elections — formally joined the SIC.
The SIC is an alliance of Islamic political and religious parties in the Muslim-majority country, representing followers of the school of Sunni Islam.
The Election Commission of Pakistan will hold an open hearing on Feb. 26 of the PTI-backed SIC’s plea seeking the allocation of its share of reserved seats in the national and provincial Assemblies.
On Feb. 26, President Alvi rejected a summary from the caretaker Parliamentary Affairs Ministry to summon the first session of the newly elected National Assembly session on February 29.
Mr. Alvi maintained that all reserved seats be allocated before the summoning of the session in which newly-elected members of the National Assembly will take oath.
After the denial by Mr. Alvi — a close aide of PTI founder Khan and a former senior member of his party — National Assembly outgoing Speaker Raja Pervaiz Ashraf decided to convene the lower House of Parliament session on February 29.
Meanwhile, the Punjab Assembly session on Feb. 26 saw the election of Maryam, the 50-year-old senior vice president of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party, as the first-ever woman Chief Minister of Pakistan’s most populous Province.
Later in the day in Sindh, senior Pakistan Peoples Party leader Murad Ali Shah was reelected as the new Chief Minister of the Province after securing 112 votes out of 148 total cast during voting for the coveted position.
Though independents backed by the PTI won majority seats at the National Assembly in the February 8 general election, the PML-N and the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) have agreed on a power-sharing deal to form a new coalition government, which may effectively end Mr. Khan’s chances of returning to power.
Mr. Khan’s party has rejected the attempts by the PML-N and the PPP to form a coalition government, warning that robbing its public endorsement by the “mandate thieves” will result in the worst political instability.
Independent candidates — a majority backed by the PTI party — won 93 National Assembly seats.
The PML-N won 75 seats, while the PPP came third with 54 seats. The Muttahida Qaumi Movement Pakistan (MQM-P) has 17 seats.
Imran Khan’s party to call ‘parallel’ Punjab Assembly session to elect CM, Speaker: report
Former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan’s party plans to call a “parallel” Punjab Assembly session to elect the Chief Minister, Speaker and Deputy Speaker, claiming that newly-elected chief Minister Maryam Nawaz was in the House on “a stolen mandate”, a media report said on Feb. 27.
Ms. Nawaz, the 50-year-old senior Vice-President of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party, made history by becoming the first-ever woman Chief Minister of Pakistan’s most populous Punjab Province after receiving 220 votes.
She defeated Rana Aftab of 71-year-old Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf-backed Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC), who received no votes as his party boycotted the election.
Former-cricketer-turned-politician Khan’s PTI party made a call for a “parallel” Punjab Assembly on Monday after claiming a strength of 250 members, including reserved seats for women and minorities, the Dawn newspaper reported.
To win the Chief Minister’s election, a candidate needs to win the backing of the majority, which is 187 members in the House that currently has 327 seats.
Addressing a press conference, PTI’s central leader, Shaukat Basra, claimed that more than half of the elected Punjab Assembly members, including the newly elected Chief Minister Maryam, were in the House on “a stolen mandate”.
He claimed that Ms. Nawaz was defeated by a PTI-backed candidate, Mehr Sharafat, in Lahore’s PP-159 constituency, according to the report.
Asserting that the results were rigged to ensure the new Punjab Chief Minister’s victory, Mr. Basra said that Ms. Nawaz “won the election on February 9 instead of February 8”.
“PML-N leaders used to say they struck a deal with powers that be, but they failed to strike a deal with the people of Pakistan,” he said.
“This rigged election will result in anarchy,” the PTI leader said.
Claiming that the establishment was still requesting PTI founder Khan to become Prime Minister, Mr. Basra said, “But Mr. Khan is determined that the establishment should ensure the mandate given by the people of Pakistan to PTI-backed candidates be returned,” he said.
Separately, the party criticised Ms. Nawaz’s election as the Chief Minister of the politically crucial Punjab Province and said all democratic and constitutional norms were trampled to elect her.
In a statement, the party’s spokesperson claimed that police “imposed a curfew” outside the assembly to prevent PTI’s members and the nominee for Chief Minister from entering the assembly.
It claimed that the sanctity of the Punjab Assembly was violated by “stealing the public mandate” to bring a “defeated woman” to power.
The spokesperson said the people of Punjab “would not tolerate an insult to their mandate”, according to the report.
At least 103 lawmakers of the PTI-backed SIC staged a walkout after the SIC nominee for Chief Minister, Aftab, was not permitted to speak at the point of order.
The newly-elected Speaker, Malik Ahmad Khan, eventually moved forward with the proceedings to elect a new leader of the House after efforts to bring back the boycotting lawmakers went in vain.
The PML-N clinched both speaker and deputy speaker offices in the Punjab Assembly.
In a marathon session of the Punjab Assembly on Saturday, the lawmakers elected PML-N leader Malik Ahmad Khan as the custodian of the House and Zaheer Iqbal Channar as his deputy.
The PML-N won 137 seats, while independents backed by 71-year-old Khan’s PTI party won 113 in the Punjab Assembly. Separately, 20-odd independents, not PTI-backed, have already joined the PML-N.
Punjab is the most populous Province of Pakistan, home to 120 million people.
