KARACHI: Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi has announced that Prime Minister Imran Khan will seek a vote of confidence from the parliamentarians following the Senate election upset.
The vote of confidence is a formal process in which people (such as the members of a legislature) vote in order to indicate whether or not they support the leader (Prime Minister).
In this regard, the seventh amendment to the Constitution of Pakistan was adopted by the elected Parliament of Pakistan on 16 May 1977, a month before the ending of the democratic government of Prime Minister Zulfikar Bhutto. The seventh amendment enables the elected Prime Minister to obtain a Vote of confidence by the elected members of Parliament.
Article 96-A of the Constitution of Pakistan states, “If at any time the Prime Minister considers it necessary to obtain a vote of confidence of the people of Pakistan, he may advise the President to cause matter to be referred to a referendum in accordance with law made by Parliament.”
“If, on the final count of the votes cast at the referendum, the Prime Minister fails to secure majority of the total votes cast (51 percent) in the matter of the confidence of the people of Pakistan, he shall be deemed to have tendered his resignation within the meaning of Article 94,” it added.
In a major upset to the government, the joint opposition candidate Yousuf Raza Gilani won the hotly contested general seat from Islamabad, beating PTI’s Abdul Hafeez Shaikh. According to unofficial and unverified results, Gilani won 169 votes, while Shaikh bagged 164 votes.
Following the shocking defeat of PTI candidate Abdul Hafeez Shaikh in the Senate elections, the members of the opposition are questioning the moral justification of Prime Minister Imran Khan to stay at the helm. On the other hand, the government accused the opposition of indulging in corrupt practices to win the Senate elections.
