Khan’s confidence vote victory will fail to bring an end to political upheaval in Pakistan
Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan won a vote of confidence in parliament on Saturday after a Senate election defeat last week resulted in the biggest political crisis of his time in office.
The former cricket star won 178 votes – six more than the 172 he needed – after challenging his party to back him or watch him return to opposition.
Mr Khan, 68, won the vote after rival parties did not attend the National Assembly session. But last week’s Senate setback energised his opponents as a campaign to remove him appeared to lose momentum.
Supporters of Mr Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf ruling party surrounded and attacked opposition leaders as they spoke to the media outside parliament.
Mr Khan demanded the vote of confidence last week after recently appointed Finance Minister Abdul Shaikh was defeated in an election to a Senate seat in Islamabad by former president Yousuf Gilani.
Only Islamabad’s two senators are elected by parliament; the other 50 are elected by provincial assemblies. Mr Shaikh’s defeat denied him the chance to enter parliament, which he needs to do to keep his post beyond six months.
Mr Khan accused more than a dozen of his party’s 178 MPs of taking bribes from the opposition to vote for Mr Gilani, and demanded a public pledge of loyalty.
Voting was secret, so the rebels could not be identified.
“This is your democratic right ... just raise your hands that you don’t have confidence and I will go into the opposition [benches],” Mr Khan told supporters during a televised speech to the nation on Thursday.
Yet when the vote came, he took no chances. Mr Khan wrote to party MPs that they risked being declared defectors if they voted against him, which would have cost them their seats. The confidence vote was held by division.
Officials told Bloomberg that Pakistan’s intelligence service was asked to monitor the movements of Mr Khan’s politicians.
Opposition parties boycotted the vote, saying the Senate defeat showed that Mr Khan no longer enjoyed the confidence of the house and the vote of confidence was unnecessary.
Mr Khan’s ploy of a confidence vote was praised as a master-stroke by his supporters, but some commentators suggested it was a panic measure.
“The electoral ouster of Khan’s own finance minister has galvanised the opposition, and we can expect to see some energetic and well-attended anti-government rallies in the coming weeks,” said Michael Kugelman, deputy director of the Asia Programme at the Woodrow Wilson Centre in the US.
“And if Yousuf Gilani manages to win the race to become chair of the Senate later this month, that will be another big blow to Khan.”
Mr Khan criticised the electoral authorities for failing to hold a clean poll in the Senate election and he attacked them again after he won the confidence vote. “If this election was carried out well by you then who knows what is a bad election,” he said.
Mr Khan won power in 2018 after a crowd-pleasing campaign where he vowed to tackle the corruption of Pakistan’s political elites.
Leaders of the rival Pakistan Muslim League and Pakistan Peoples Party have since faced corruption investigations that they said were politically motivated.
An alliance of opposition parties is threatening to mobilise a mass march on the capital this month to force Mr Khan to resign.
Opposition leaders will be looking for any signs that the Senate upset leads to dwindling support from the powerful military, who have ruled Pakistan or pulled political strings for much of the country’s history.
“The elephant in the room here is the army,” said Mr Kugelman. “Khan and the security establishment have seen eye-to-eye throughout his time as premier, but the question will loom: if Khan finds himself under increasing pressure in the coming weeks, will the army conclude he’s no longer its favourite son?”