KARACHI: Hours before Shehbaz Sharif took an oath as the country’s new prime minister, Sindh Governor Imran Ismail on Monday sent his resignation from the office to the president.

In his resignation letter addressed to President Arif Alvi, a copy of which is available with Dawn, Mr Ismail states: “In view of the abject failure of all state institutions to take due notice of the facts and documentary evidence of the Lettergate scandal and the foreign sponsored conspiracy to remove Mr Imran Khan, my leader and the duly elected prime minister of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan from his office, and installing instead, a person facing serious charges of corruption in a manner that history shall reveal in full measure in due course, I write to inform you that my conscience does not permit me to accord state protocol to such a person in my capacity as governor of Sindh, which was the first province to adopt the Pakistan Resolution.

“While I shall continue to strive for achieving true sovereignty of our motherland under the command of my able leader Mr Imran Khan, I believe that holding this office any further shall be a violation of my self-respect and of the sacred trust reposed in me by my leader.

“Consequently, I hereby tender my resignation with immediate effect and with the absolute conviction that no one shall be able to stop Pakistan from reaching its full potential to represent the true essence of a progressive Islamic state and claim its rightful place in the comity of civilised nations,” the resignation concluded.

Mr Ismail became the 33rd governor of Sindh in August 2018. One of the founding members of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf, he was elected as an MPA from a Karachi constituency in the 2018 general elections, but later resigned to become the Sindh governor.

The expected decision from Mr Ismail came a day after he attended the PTI’s massive power show in Karachi in protest against an alleged foreign conspiracy that led to the fall of the PTI government.

Published in Dawn, April 12th, 2022