Decisive win for Constitutional morality in Pakistan
After a vexatious day-long drama that found him a whisker away from being hauled up for contempt of court, Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan was decisively voted out of power in the wee hours of Sunday. Even before the voting process was over, Imran vacated his official residence despite his earlier grandstanding of playing till the last ball. He slunk away without turning up in Parliament right through Saturday and let his loyalist speaker be cannon fodder for the Supreme Court and the united opposition by directing him to resist the vote till the last minute. The speaker finally resigned before Parliament took up the no-confidence motion.
Also, over two dozen of the ruling party’s rebels escaped disqualification as they did not need to cast their ballot. If Team Imran tried to pull a fast one by playing the emotional card of foreign plot to reject the no-confidence motion and dissolve Parliament, an upright SC bench unanimously saw through the jumla and restored the majesty of the Constitution and parliamentary democracy by ordering the floor test. And when it appeared Imran was bent on defying its diktat, it opened the its door close to midnight to process possible contempt charges, thus pressuring him into capitulation. In the end, it was the SC that deserved the player of the match award.
Proceedings in Pakistan’s Parliament finally merited more attention in South Asia than a Netflix soap, though the West stayed fixated on Ukraine for the better part of the day. About four years ago, destiny had tossed the ball to Imran to break the stranglehold of the corrupt Sharifs and Bhuttos in power and make history. Imran spilled the chance by letting power get to his head and allowing the country to plunge into a deeper economic pit than he inherited while creating a massive foreign policy mess.
His successor, Shehbaz Sharif, inherits a crown of thorns with little fiscal room for reforms as general elections are barely a year away. But his vast experience in governance will be a plus in coalition management. Since the Miltablishment wants to resume trade with India while opening dialogue on knotty issues like Kashmir, some thaw could be expected in bilateral ties.