The PML-N has instructed its members of the provincial assembly to travel to Lahore today for a meeting to plot a response to the vote of confidence in the chief minister.
LAHORE: The Punjab Assembly’s PML-N delegation has been ordered to go to Lahore on January 2 in response to the chief minister’s motions of no-confidence in the speaker and his deputy as well as his vote of confidence.
According to party sources, the meeting of the PML-N Punjab parliamentary party, which will be presided over by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, will take place in the first week of January.
Discussions at the meeting will centre on the vote of confidence in the speaker and his deputy from Punjab Chief Minister Parvez Elahi.
According to the sources, PM Shehbaz would brief the party’s legislators on the strategy during the provincial assembly.
They further stated that the party’s representatives in the provincial parliament would also be asked for their opinions on the current climate.
Currently, Punjab is experiencing a constitutional crisis.
The new judgement from the Lahore High Court has given everyone a chance to evaluate their political plans, but the ongoing political unrest appears to be far from ended. The PTI and PML-Q, the two parties in power in Punjab, want to dissolve the assembly and hold early elections nationwide.
As a response, the government at the Centre is simultaneously challenging the leaders in Punjab to carry out their plan while making every effort to prevent the assembly from being dissolved.
Since Imran Khan, the leader of the PTI, declared at a public event on November 26 that the Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa assemblies would be dissolved soon, the nation—particularly Punjab—has been mired in a political and constitutional crisis.
The government side initially said that it would do all it took to prevent the dissolution, but it then changed course and began challenging the PTI to move forward with the plan, declaring that elections would be held in two provinces in the event the party actually did so.
The PTI leadership also put off the plan to dissolve the assemblies for weeks while the party’s leader met with MPs and party members to finalise the strategy.
On December 17, Imran stated that the assembly would be dissolved on December 23 while seated with the chief ministers of Punjab and K-P.
He did not explain why, after the parties had decided that the assemblies would undoubtedly be dissolved, he chose to postpone the decision for another week.
PTI leader Fawad Chaudhry was quick to add that one week was needed to finalise the plan for the verification of the resignations of PTI MNAs that had been languishing in the National Assembly since April of this year when the opponents and public began to question the odd delay.
The PTI leadership believed that it was close to achieving its goal of forcing general elections in the nation with the announcement of dissolving the assemblies and conveying that the party legislators were finally prepared to appear before the NA speaker after an eight-month delay. It also believed that its winning streak would help it win, if not sweep, the elections.
The opposition in the Punjab Assembly, which is part of the ruling alliance in the Centre, put a spanner in the works.
On the one hand, it gave the provincial legislature’s speaker a no-trust resolution against the chief minister, Elahi, while on the other, Punjab Governor Baligur Rehman instructed the chief minister to seek a vote of confidence from the assembly on December 21.
Through a Punjab Assembly finding that the governor’s directive was against the assembly’s rules as well as the Constitution, the PTI and PML-Q disobeyed the order and neutralised the action.
In response, the governor declared the speaker’s decision to be unconstitutional and removed the Punjab chief minister from office for failing to follow his order to request a vote of confidence from the provincial parliament on December 21.
The PML-N then withdrew the no-confidence resolution against the Punjab chief minister, claiming that it would still proceed because Elahi had been de-notified by the governor and was no longer the CM.
The Punjab Assembly speaker and his deputy were the targets of the party’s no-confidence motions, according to top whip Khalil Tahir Sindhu.
Elahi was reinstated as the Punjab CM after the LHC accepted his promise not to submit the governor a summary for the dissolution of the legislature before the next hearing date, January 11. The governor’s de-notification order was promptly contested before the LHC.
