Islamabad: Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan won the trust vote in the National Assembly. Prime Minister Khan secured 178 votes in the 342-member lower house of Parliament during a special session which lasted for about an hour. The opposition disappeared from the assembly during the trust vote. The speaker of the National Assembly announced that 178 votes were cast in favor of Imran Khan. This means that Imran Khan’s chair is now safe.
Imran Khan is the second Prime Minister in the history of Pakistan who faced a vote of confidence in the National Assembly on his own will. Earlier in 1993, Nawaz Sharif voluntarily faced the trust vote.
Imran Khan wanted the support of 171 MPs in the National Assembly, as the House currently has 340 members out of a total of 342 members and two seats are vacant. Imran’s PTI has 157 MPs, while the opposition Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz has 83 members and the Pakistan Peoples Party has 55 MPs.
On behalf of opposition alliance, former Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani on Wednesday gave a big blow to Imran Khan by defeating the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) candidate and the country’s Finance Minister Abdul Hafeez Sheikh. After this defeat, Imran Khan could not believe the members of his party and he accepted the demand for a motion of no confidence by the opposition.
Before the government’s majority was discussed, the Opposition alliance on Friday announced that they will boycott the floor test as their candidate’s triumph in the Senate election was itself a moral victory against the premier. Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman said no Opposition member will attend the National Assembly session scheduled for Saturday, in which Prime Minister Khan will seek a vote of confidence. The announcement from the chief of the PDM, a 10-party Opposition alliance, comes after Khan addressed the nation on Thursday, explaining why he was seeking a vote of confidence in the wake of the Senate elections in which the Opposition managed to stage an upset.