Rana Sanaullah says that if people can’t get into Punjab, the governor will take over.
Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah said on Wednesday that Punjab would be put under governor’s rule if he was not allowed to go there.
At a press conference in Islamabad, he said that he had already started writing a summary for the imposition of the governor’s rule, which is done by the interior ministry, because of what opposition political leaders had been saying.
“If my entry is limited, it will be a reason for the governor to take over,” he said.
The press conference by the interior minister comes just hours after Chaudhry Parvez Elahi of the PML-Q was sworn in as the new chief minister of Punjab. This happened after the Supreme Court ruled that Hamza Shehbaz’s victory in the July 22 run-off election was not valid.
Elahi took his oath of office at Islamabad’s Aiwan-i-Sadr, presided by President Dr. Arif Alvi. When Punjab Governor Balighur Rehman declined to do the job, Elahi had to rush from Lahore to the federal capital.
After months of drama, which began with Usman Buzdar’s resignation, Elahi was finally sworn in as the chief executive of the province.
The Minister added at today’s news conference that the Supreme Court’s judgment had “made complexities and destabilized the political situation,” leading to a decline in the value of the rupee and the stock market.
According to him, Article 63-A, which deals with the expulsion of legislators for treason, can be understood by a second grader to mean that the dissident legislators’ votes will be counted.
He went on to say that the Supreme Court’s latest judgment ran counter to the ECP’s decision to de-seat 25 dissident PTI lawmakers who voted for Hamza in the April 16 poll, which was itself based on an order from the SC.
He explained that the Supreme Court had ruled that MPAs should obey the directions of the parliamentary party president, in contrast to the ECP’s finding, which had relied on MPAs’ refusal to do so.
The 25 legislators who defected from Hamza’s government would not have been counted against him in the April election, he said, thus Hamza should have stayed in power.
From what I can tell, the proposed interpretation of Article 63-A will not stand. The legal profession as a whole would agree that this amounts to a fundamental alteration of the Constitution. Sanaullah declared, “We would defend the parliament’s authority since the SC does not have the power to amend the Constitution.”
We’d like to keep our comments to a minimum because this is a difficult issue. Every nation requires a judicial system that is beyond politics. Without it, no nation can develop.
Mahnur is MS(development Studies)Student at NUST University, completed BS Hons in Eng Literature. Content Writer, Policy analyst, Climate Change specialist, Teacher, HR Recruiter.
