Pakistan’s No-Confidence Vote and Rule of Law

Pakistan’s No-Confidence Vote and Rule of Law
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21/03/2022

Nicola Costantin

Pakistan and Human Rights Researcher

Global Human Rights Defence



On March 8, opposition political parties sought a no-confidence motion in Parliament to remove Prime Minister Imran Khan, blaming him for insignificant governance and mismanaging the economy of the Country (Shahzad, 2022).  Indeed, under the Pakistani constitution, the PM will cease to hold office if the majority of the National Assembly would vote for the motion of no-confidence. However, what happened after the submission of the formal request has been an escalation into dangerous confrontations between the Government and the Opposition, threatening the normal Democratic process (Gossman, 2022).

Opposition lawmakers and political analysts say Khan has lost the assistance of the dominant military arm, whose support has been crucial to hold the power since 2018 (Shahzad, 2022). Nonetheless, On March 10, the police forces in the capital, Islamabad, thundered in the parliamentarians’ apartments detaining, for four hours, two opposition MPs along with other 17 opposition activists (Hussain, 2022). Furthermore, the Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry intimated that “one million” supporters would come to Pakistani capital on voting day and alerted that anyone who wishes to vote against the President would “have to pass through these people on their way in and out of the Parliament building”, creating a potentially violent confrontation and polarizing the Pakistani society. The Special Assistant to Prime Minister on Political Communication Dr. Shahbaz Gill even added that if any PTI member voted in favor of this “no-trust move”, the “photographs of traitors” would be displayed in cities (APP, 2022). 

Concluding, Parliamentary voting is a core democratic principle, and these violent attempts and threats to block the no-confidence motion endanger an essential institution in a representative government, and more generally, the rule of law.












Bibliography. 

APP, 2022. Party traitors’ pictures to be displayed in cities: Gill. Thenews.com.pk. Accessed 21 March 2022 Available at: https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/941348-party-traitors-pictures-to-be-displayed-in-cities-gill

Gossman, P., 2022. Pakistan’s No-Confidence Vote Should Respect Democratic Process. Human Rights Watch. Accessed 21 March 2022, Available at: https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/03/16/pakistans-no-confidence-vote-should-respect-democratic-process.

Hussain, J., 2022. Opposition in uproar after Islamabad police storm Parliament Lodges, arrest 19 including JUI-F MNAs. DAWN.COM. Accessed 21 March 2022, Available at: https://www.dawn.com/news/1679290.

Shahzad, A., 2022. Pakistani opposition moves no-confidence motion to seek PM Khan's ouster. Reuters. Accessed 21 March 2022, Available at: https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/pakistani-opposition-rallies-press-pm-khan-resign-2022-03-08.