LAHORE: The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz and allied parties are convinced that unlike Islamabad, Punjab will not see any legal and procedural impasse that may warrant judicial intervention for electing the new chief minister of the province.

“The elements resisting and delaying the polls for electing the new Punjab chief executive are fairly weakened after abortive moves for manipulating the constitutional process in the National Assembly,” a senior PML-N leader tells Dawn.

Optimistic that the process for electing the new leader of the house in the Punjab Assembly will be held on April 16, if not earlier, he believes that Chaudhry Parvez Elahi, the speaker, will not follow in the footsteps of former National Assembly speaker Asad Qaiser and ruin his political career by going to the extent of contempt of court.

“Unlike Asad Qaiser, Parvez Elahi does not have such a deep affiliation with Imran Khan.”

Assembly to meet on 16th to elect chief minister

The vote for the CM’s slot was to be held on April 6 as per the assurance the Punjab advocate general had given to the Supreme Court during the hearing of the case regarding delay in the no-confidence motion against the prime minister. The opposition PML-N has moved the Lahore High Court as the Punjab Assembly officials violated the assurance given to the apex court. The case will come up for hearing on Monday (today).

The PML-N official claims that some common friends are trying to reduce distrust between the Sharifs and the Chaudhrys of Gujrat that increased after the latter decided to go with the ruling PTI instead of the opposition in the race for the formation of a new government in Punjab.

“The common friends of Mian Nawaz Sharif and Chaudhry Shujaat have contacted the PML-N supremo in London to find ways for a working relationship between the two political families in the future politics,” he disclosed.

PTI dissident groups led by Jahangir Tareen, Abdul Aleem Khan and Malik Asad held a consultative meeting at a local hotel where MPAs of the alliance are staying, to discuss their strategy for countering the ruling coalition’s plans.

The opposition leadership ignores the government threats of getting the dissident PTI MPAs disqualified from a court of law for violating the party policy.

Syed Hassan Murtaza, parliamentary leader of the PPP, says the Supreme Court has already settled the issue of disqualification by declaring that punishment for a crime can be handed down only after the offence is committed.

He says since the PTI has no parliamentary leader in the Punjab Assembly at present who can send reference against a `defector’ to the speaker as per law, there is no question of action against the defectors.

He says unlike in the National Assembly where PTI defectors were deliberately kept out of the no-confidence process by the opposition to save them from likely defection, all dissidents of the ruling party will be asked to vote for Hamza Shehbaz, the opposition’s nominee for the CM’s office.

In the 371-member provincial assembly, the PTI has 183 MPAs (including 25 dissidents), PML-N 165, PML-Q 10, PPP seven, five independents and one belonging to Rahi-i-Haq Party. One of the candidates, Jugnu Mohsin, has already joined the PML-N.

A candidate needs at least 186 votes to win the race for Punjab chief minister’s office.

Published in Dawn, April 11th, 2022