Khan wins confidence vote but his party loses key seat
HORSE-TRADING ALLEGED AS FINANCE MINISTER DEFEATED IN SENATE ELECTION
PAKISTAN prime minister Imran Khan survived a vote of confidence by the country’s parliament last Saturday (6), days after his party lost a key Senate seat to an opposition candidate.
Ruling party and opposition activists clashed briefly outside the parliament ahead of the vote, with local TV channels showing a shoe being thrown at former interior minister Ahsan Iqbal.
Khan secured 178 votes in the 340-seat National Assembly through an open ballot, boycotted by the main opposition parties, the Pakistan Muslim League and Pakistan People’s Party.
The vote followed the contentious results of last Wednesday’s (3) election to Pakistan’s Senate, whose members are chosen by provincial parliaments and lawmakers from the lower house.
In a sign of growing ruptures within his ruling Pakistan Tehreeke-Insaf party, Khan’s finance minister lost his seat to an opposition candidate, suggesting some members of the party had switched their loyalty.
Khan – who came to power in 2018 after a campaign vowing to clean up corruption – accused the opposition of horse-trading and buying some of his party’s parliamentarians in a bid to ward off graft investigations.
Speaking following the confidence vote, the prime minister accused the opposition parties of “plundering national wealth” during their times in office.
“This was a decade of darkness used by the two parties to ruin national institutions,” he added.
Addressing party workers outside the parliament, senior opposition leader and former prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi denounced the vote as “illegal and unconstitutional”.
“People are being deceived by this government,” he said.
Khan has struggled to stabilise an economy hit by soaring inflation, a depreciating rupee and ballooning deficits. He has blamed the opposition’s mismanagement in power for the country’s fiscal woes.
THE leader of Sri Lanka’s Catholics demanded that the government find the perpetrators of deadly Easter attacks two years ago, as black-clad worshippers held silent protests outside the capital’s churches last Sunday (7).
No one has been prosecuted over the bombings at three hotels and three churches in Colombo that killed 279 people on April 21, 2019, although a local investigation found that followers of a jihadist group were behind them.
An inquiry set up by former president Maithripala Sirisena said in a report published last month that he and his intelligence chiefs should be charged for failing to prevent the attacks.
“Our effort is to establish who was actually behind the attacks,” Catholic leader Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith said in a statement last
Sunday. “This is not an issue only for Catholics. All Sri Lankans suffered after this attack.”
Several Buddhist monks joined Ranjith and other protesters outside St Anthony’s church, one of the sites attacked, carrying banners calling for justice.
Ranjith said last week he was unhappy with the lack of progress in the inquiry. “If the authorities fail to come up with answers as to who was behind the attacks by the second anniversary of the bombings, we will call for a nationwide black-flag campaign,” he said.