Pakistan PM Imran Khan will play till his last ball and won’t resign, said Neelam Irshad Sheikh, spokesperson of the ruling party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI), in an exclusive conversation with CNN-News18. The comments come on a day Khan is likely to resign after his address to the nation.
“PM Imran Khan is not stepping down. He is an elected prime minister. He’ll play till his last ball,” Sheikh said, adding that Pakistani Army Chief General Qamar Bajwa and ISI chief Lieutenant General Nadeem Anjum have reached the PM’s house to meet Khan ahead of his address later today.
Sheikh also alleged that Khan has been a victim of an “overseas plot”, a charge also levelled by the embattled prime minister who has threatened to show a “letter” that purportedly contains evidence of a foreign conspiracy against his government.
Khan’s government is on shaky ground with the opposition moving a no-confidence motion to oust the PM holding him responsible for mismanaging the country’s economy. The debate on the motion will be taken up in the Pakistan National Assembly on March 31.
Khan had on Tuesday directed his party’s lawmakers to either abstain from voting or not attend the Assembly session on the day of the voting on the motion. So far, no Pakistani PM has been ousted through a no-confidence motion, and Khan is the third PM to have faced this challenge. In fact, no Pakistani PM has ever completed a full five-term in office.
In the 342-member National Assembly, Khan’s PTI needs at least 172 members on its side to remain in the government. Nearly 20 defections in PTI and cracks in the coalition have made him short of 172 votes.
Around 100 lawmakers from the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and Pakistan Peoples’ Party (PPP) submitted the no-confidence motion before the National Assembly Secretariat on March 8, alleging that the PTI government led by Khan was responsible for economic mismanagement, spiralling inflation and corruption in the country.
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