By Our Web Desk
ISLAMABAD– After a defeat of PTI candidate Abdul Hafiz Sheikh in Senate Election, the Prime Minister Imran Khan will take a vote of confidence from the National Assembly, said Foreign Minister Makhdoom Shah Mahmood Qureshi.
The decision came in the backdrop of an upset in Senate elections in which Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani of Pakistan Peoples’ Party Parliamentarians (PPPP) won the general seat from Federal Capital by securing 169 votes against 164 secured by Dr. Abdul Hafeez Sheikh of Pakistan Tehrik Insaf (PTI).
“PTI has unanimously decided that Prime Minister Imran Khan will take a vote of confidence from the National Assembly,” Qureshi said while addressing a press conference.
He described the victory of Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani as “negation of democracy” as well as the endorsement of Prime Minister Imran Khan’s apprehensions of corrupt practices in the Senate elections.
The foreign minister said the way voting was done on the Capital’s general seat , strengthened the PTI’s narrative about use of money in the Senate elections.
“We were apprehensive that the elections will be bought and the buyers of conscience will buy the votes using the name of democracy.”
Qureshi said the PTI’s female candidate elected on the seat of Islamabad taking 174 votes. “However, on the general seat in Islamabad, we were getting signals that Gilani was asked to stand in the election with the assurance that the election will be won for him.”
He said every tactic was used to win the election of Gilani, which put a stamp on the narrative of Imran Khan about votes buying.He said in the last Senate election, when votes were bought in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly, the PTI stripped its 20 members of their assembly membership.
The PTI government invited the opposition to sit together and undertake a constitutional amendment to stop the buying of votes, he concluded.
