(Actualis with the absence of the resumption of the session of the National Assembly and upcoming meeting of the Council of Ministers)
ISLAMABAD, April 9 (Reuters) – Pakistan’s parliament abruptly adjourned its session ahead of a scheduled vote on the no-confidence motion against Prime Minister Imran Khan and contrary to what was originally scheduled, the session did not resume on Saturday afternoon , prolonging political uncertainty in the country.
Imran Khan convened a cabinet meeting on Saturday evening.
Sources said the cabinet will meet at 9 p.m. local time (4 p.m. GMT).
“We don’t know the agenda for the meeting,” a government official told Reuters. “We were just instructed to come together.”
Members of Imran Khan’s party hinted on Friday that they would do everything to try to delay the vote on the no-confidence motion.
Imran Khan has meanwhile promised to “fight” against any attempt to replace him.
On Thursday, the Supreme Court of Pakistan declared unconstitutional the maneuver of Imran Khan to block the vote of the motion of no confidence and dissolve the parliament to provoke early elections.
The Court ordered that the National Assembly be reinstated.
Last weekend, Imran Khan had escaped the vote of a motion of censure, blocked by the vice-president of Parliament because judged unconstitutional, and had presented the resignation of his government and asked for the holding of early legislative elections.
The opposition accuses the former star player of the national cricket team, who became Prime Minister in 2018, of having failed to recover the economy, damaged by the coronavirus pandemic, and of not having kept his promises in terms of transparency and control of government action.
Imran Khan, 69, lost his majority in Parliament after several parties decided to leave the government coalition to join the opposition. (Report Asif Shahzad and Syed Raza Hassan, French version Matthieu Protard)