The Pakistani Supreme Court will deliver its judgment on Thursday evening April 7 on the legality of the process which enabled Prime Minister Imran Khan to avoid a vote of no confidence and obtain the dissolution of the National Assembly and the calling of early elections. .
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The highest court in the country must decide whether the deputy speaker of the Assembly, a faithful of Imran Khan, acted in accordance with the Constitution by refusing Sunday to submit the motion of censure to a vote.
Imran Khan, 69, a former cricket star who won the 2018 election, looked set to be unseated as the opposition garnered enough votes to cost him his parliamentary majority.
The head of government then obtained Sunday from the President of the Republic, Arif Alvi, another of his allies, the dissolution of the Assembly, which entails the convening of early legislative elections within 90 days.
“
We will meet again for the judgment at 7:30
p.m.” (2:30 p.m. GMT) on Thursday, Supreme Court President Umar Ata Bandial said.
"Foreign interference"
The Court has already indicated that it will rule only on the legality of the decision of the Vice-President of the Assembly, who had refused to vote on the motion on the grounds that it was unconstitutional because it resulted from "
foreign interference
".
It is therefore difficult to predict what consequences this judgment will have on the dissolution and the calling of elections.
A constitutional precedent does exist, however.
In 1988, Muhammad Khan Junejo appealed to the Supreme Court after then-President General Zia-ul-Haq, who had seized power in a military coup a decade earlier, dissolved the Assembly national.
The Court then considered that the dissolution was illegal, but that since elections had already been called, it was in the general interest to let the electoral process continue.
Read alsoPakistan: the probable fall of Imran Khan
Umar Ata Bandial seemed to suggest on Thursday that the same pragmatism could once again prevail.
"
There is a lot of bitterness between the parties in the Assembly and we have to think about whether they are going to be able to get along
," he said.
Pakistan, a nuclear-armed Islamic republic of 220 million, which celebrates its 75th anniversary this year, is used to political crises.
No Prime Minister has ever completed his term in this country which, since its independence in 1947, has known four successful military putsches and at least as many coup attempts, and has spent more than three decades under a military regime.
