SRINAGAR: Creating history, Pakistan’s opposition voted out Imran Khan as Prime Minister and made him the first elected leader to be removed by a no-confidence vote. There were 174 votes against him.
Speaker Asad Qaisar had resigned before the motion was put to vote. It was the Muslim League leader Ayaz Sadiq who presided over the session. The new speaker has ruled that the nomination for a new Prime Minister must be made by 2 pm on Monday.
The marathon session concluded after 13 hours, reports appearing in the media said.
“I don’t want to go back to the bitterness of the past. We want to forget them and move forward,” Shahbaz Sharief, the opposition candidate for Prime Minister said after Khan’s ouster, according to Dawn newspaper. “We will not take revenge or do an injustice; we will not send people to jail for no reason, law and justice will take its course.”
“On April 10, 1973, this house approved the Constitution. On April 10, 1986, Benazir Bhutto ended her exile and returned to Lahore for her struggle against Gen Ziaul Haq,” Bilawal Bhutto Zardari was quoted saying. “Today is April 10, 2022, and the one we had declared selected, the non-democratic burden this country was bearing for the past 3 years, today, April 10, 2022, welcome back to purana (old) Pakistan.”
