Explained: What is Article 5 of the Pakistan Constitution under which no-trust motion against Imran Khan as PM was rejected?

Explained: What is Article 5 of the Pakistan Constitution under which no-trust motion against Imran Khan as PM was rejected?

The political chaos caused a constitutional crisis that was left to the country’s Supreme Court to sort.

On Sunday (April 3), Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan successfully evaded a no-confidence motion against him after President Arif Alvi dissolved the National Assembly. However, later on, Sunday night, the Cabinet Division of Pakistan issued a notification, de-notifying Imran Khan as the Prime Minister, The Express Tribune reported. The political chaos caused a constitutional crisis that was left to the country’s Supreme Court to sort.

Pakistan’s Supreme Court will hear on Monday the dismissal of a no-confidence vote against Imran Khan by the deputy speaker and the subsequent dissolution of Parliament by the President on the advice of the embattled premier.

Explained: What is Article 5 of the Pakistan Constitution under which no-trust motion against Imran Khan as PM was rejected?
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President Arif Alvi had dissolved the National Assembly on the advice of PM Khan, minutes after Deputy Speaker Qasim Suri rejected a no-confidence motion against the premier, who had effectively lost the majority in the 342-member lower house of Parliament. Suri dismissed the no-confidence motion submitted by the joint opposition to dislodge the prime minister as he termed it “unconstitutional” under Article 5 of Pakistan’s Constitution.

What is Article 5 of Pakistan’s Constitution?

Under the heading ‘Loyalty to the State and Obedience to the Constitution and law’, Article 5 of the constitution of Pakistan has two clauses:

  1. Clause (1) states that “Loyalty to the State is the basic duty of every citizen”

  2. Clause 2 states that “Obedience to the Constitution and law is the inviolable obligation of every citizen wherever he may be and every other person for the time being within Pakistan”.

How has Article 5 triggered the no-confidence motion?

Explained: What is Article 5 of the Pakistan Constitution under which no-trust motion against Imran Khan as PM was rejected?
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At the outset of the National Assembly session, Law and Information Minister Fawad Chaudhary read out Article 5 of the Constitution and accused the Opposition of “disloyalty to the state”. Referring to Clause 1 of the Article, Chaudhary reiterated Imran’s allegation of a “foreign conspiracy” against the government. He further said that the vote of no confidence was the result of a conspiracy hatched by a “powerful country” that did not want Pakistan to establish its own foreign policy.

Chaudhary also said, “We were told that if the motion fails, then Pakistan’s path would be very difficult. This is an operation for a regime change by a foreign government.”

Deputy Speaker Suri then quickly accepted the argument and disallowed voting on the no-trust motion and adjourned the session for an indefinite time. Later, on the Prime Minister’s advice, President Arif Alvi dissolved the assemblies, with Imran Khan asking the nation to gear up for fresh polls.

In his detailed order, the Deputy Speaker said: “There has been blatant foreign interference in the internal affairs of Pakistan and there exists a close nexus between such foreign interference and the campaign to oust and remove the democratically elected government headed by Prime Minister Imran Khan through different means including the motion for no-confidence.”

“No self-respecting independent, democratic country and people with national pride and dignity could or should ever let such things happen nor allow its democratic institutions including parliamentary processes to be so grossly abused by foreigners or foreign states to bring a change of any Government or Prime Minister as appears to be the case presently.”

Stating that the points mentioned by the law minister were ‘valid’, Suri added, “No foreign power shall be allowed to topple an elected government through a conspiracy.”

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