Prime Minister (PM) Imran Khan addresses the National Assembly (NA) by getting 178 votes against the required 172 under Article 91(7) of the Constitution of Pakistan.
After losing a crucial seat in the Senate elections, PM Imran Khan had announced to get a vote of confidence from NA and in this regard, he took a vote of confidence from the house today and 178 members expressed confidence in him. It should be noted that the Prime Minister needed 172 votes to maintain the confidence of the House.
In his address, the Prime Minister first thanked his allies and said, “I thank you for standing by me in every difficult time.” At the same time, he thanked his lawmakers and said, “Looking at your situation yesterday, I realized that you all were heartbroken when Hafeez Sheikh lost in the Senate.”
He said, “I saw a team among you and this team of ours will become stronger because Allah says in the Qur’an that I will test your faith again and again.”
In his address, the Prime Minister said that when you come out of difficult times and become stronger, you face difficult times to become a great man, while any party is strong when it goes through difficult times and today I pay tribute to my party for coming out of this difficult time.
“Many members have arrived here with great difficulty and there are also many who were not in good health,” said PM Khan. Furthermore, after receiving a vote of confidence from the House, he said that we should never forget why Pakistan was created because when a nation retreats from its ideology, it dies.
Imran Khan said that our leadership should know that Pakistan was a great dream, the reason for dreaming of Pakistan was that we had to set an example to the world what an Islamic state is and its foundation is Madinah which was the first welfare state in the history of the world.
Moreover, the premier while addressing the assembly said that the Muslims who remained in India have been left as second class citizens and what is happening to them there today. People say that if Pakistan had not been founded, Muslims would have more power today and they would not be in this situation. Imran Khan said that Pakistan was not created for Sharif and Zardari to become billionaires, we should go back to our ideology that it was the name of a big dream.
“No matter my party stands with me or not, I will fight till the last ball,” said Prime Minister Imran Khan while ending the speech.
It should be noted that according to the Constitution of Pakistan, the President can ask the Prime Minister to seek a vote of confidence under this provision only if he is sure that the Prime Minister has lost the confidence of the members of the National Assembly.
Constitutional and political experts say this is the first time in Pakistan’s history that the president has been asking his party’s prime minister to seek a vote of confidence.
However, the opposition has raised a number of legal questions about the vote of confidence and decided to boycott it.