ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaaf has decided to boycott the election of Prime Minister in the National Assembly after ex-PM Imran Khan and other PTI MNAs have announced their resignations ahead of voting for the new PM in the parliament.
After the boycott of the PTI, opposition parties joint candidate Mian Shehbaz Sharif stands winner as the Prime Minister of Pakistan and just formality of voting is required in the National Assembly.
Earlier, there were two candidates contesting for the prime minister’s post — PML-N’s Shehbaz Sharif and PTI’s Shah Mahmood Qureshi, with former having greater prospects of success.
The NA session to elect the new leader of the House, which was earlier supposed to start at 11am, will convene at 2pm.
The NA Secretariat issued the order of the day for April 11, according to which election of the prime minister, under Article 91 of the Constitution, read with Rule 32 of Rules of Business and Conduct of Business in the National Assembly, is the only item to be taken up by the House.
PTI split over resignations
Qureshi’s participation, however, can still be considered uncertain as PTI remains indecisive on whether to go for en masse resignations of MNAs or not. The candidate will have to resign if the rest of PTI and allied parties’ MNAs tender resignations.
The PTI parliamentary party faced a split over the issue of resignations from the NA, with Fawad Chaudhry and Sheikh Rashid Ahmad claiming MNAs would resign en masse after the election of prime minister and Ali Muhammad Khan saying almost 95% of the party MNAs oppose quitting the assemblies.
Qureshi also said that no final decision had been reached yet.
Sources privy to the matter had also told Geo News earlier that majority of the PTI members were not in favour of resigning from the Assembly, but Sheikh Rasheed and Fawad Chaudhry were actively trying to push the party out of the political arena.
Members were of the view that if this happens, the PTI, as a political party, will “suffer irreparable damage,” the sources had added.
