Pakistan in turmoil, opposition names Shehbaz Sharif as prime minister

While former PM Imran Khan may think that he has bowled a political googly by dissolving house and calling for elections, this is exactly the thing that exiled (PML-N) founder Nawaz Sharif wanted in the first place.

Published on: Apr 3, 2022, 17:54:23 IST

By Shishir Gupta

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Pakistan descended into political turmoil after President Arif Alvi dissolved the National Assembly after the no-confidence motion against Imran Khan was dismissed in the house.

Pakistan's opposition leader Shehbaz Sharif. (AFP)

The opposition resumed the session of assembly and not only declared deputy speaker's order rejecting the no-confidence motion as invalid, but also declared Shehbaz Sharif as the new prime minister.

Shehbaz Sharif, the brother of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, also addressed the assembly as the new prime minister.

Pakistan People's Party leader Sherry Rehman tweeted a video wherein she claimed 197 members had elected PML-N MP Ayaz Sadiq as the new speaker.

After Sadiq occupied the speaker's chair, he re-activated the voting on no-confidence motion against the Imran Khan government, which was voted in favour of the motion as the members of the ruling alliance had already left the House.

While former PM Imran Khan may think that he has bowled a political googly by dissolving house and calling for elections, this is exactly the thing that exiled (PML-N) founder Nawaz Sharif wanted in the first place.

This is a protest move as the house was reconvened after the assembly was adjourned till April 25. According to the rules, only the President and Speaker can call the assembly once its prorogued.

Earlier in the day, deputy speaker Qasim Suri while chairing the session dismissed the no-confidence motion against Imran Khan, terming it a contradiction of the Article 5 of the constitution which said that loyalty to the state is every citizen's basic right.

The Pakistan Army, which calls the shots in the country's politics, denied involvement in the events that unfolded in the national assembly. "Army has nothing to do with the political process," Major General Babar Iftikhar, the head of the military's public relations wing, told Reuters.

Opposition leaders including Shehbaz Sharif and Bilawal Bhutto Zardari termed the move unconstitutional and had also declared to move the Supreme Court against the Speaker's decision. With the assembly already dissolved, elections are to take place within three months.

The President will appoint a caretaker prime minister according to Article 224 of the Constitution of Pakistan.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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