Former Prime Minister and Pakistani opposition leader Imran Jan has announced that his party will push for the dissolution of the Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provincial assemblies on December 23 in a new political maneuver to force the calling of early elections at the federal level.
The chief ministers of the two provinces will call for the dissolution of the respective parliaments, while Jan-friendly federal MPs will ask the speaker of the National Assembly to accept his resignation, Bloomberg reports.
«We will sacrifice our assemblies for Pakistan,» Jan said in a video-conference message to his supporters gathered in Punjab’s capital Lahore on Saturday afternoon. «I don’t want a situation like Sri Lanka. I want to defeat them at the polls,» he has argued.
Jan has appeared accompanied by the chief ministers of these two provinces and has assured that the country demands a reform of the institutions that can only be done if he regains power and has a solid mandate. «Our movement for free and fair elections continues,» he said.
Elections must now be called within 90 days. Jan’s party is aiming for a two-thirds majority in these two provinces, said an official of Jan’s party, Hammad Azhar.
Federal and provincial elections are usually held simultaneously in Pakistan, so an advance in the regional elections affects the election cycle as a whole. Jan has a majority in two of Pakistan’s four provinces.
The government of Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has criticized this «stunt.» «This noise only seeks to cover up what he has done wrong,» said Information Minister Marriyum Aurangzeb.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
