Pakistan: Khan Loses No Confidence Vote, Calls for Supporters to Go Into the Streets

I’ve not been closely following the Pakistan situation, other than by watching Indian television, which is extremely biased on this issue.

Indians have been calling for Imran Khan to be ousted, but they are also opposed to the opposition. They just hate Pakistan and want chaos in the country.

Khan for his part has said that the opposition is part of a US plot against him. I’m not sure that he’s ever presented any evidence, but given that he’s sided with Russia, I would just assume this is the case, even if he hadn’t said it himself.

However, it must be said: he did a lot to dig his own grave by going along with the coronavirus hoax. As we know from Belarus’ Lukashenko, the World Bank was going around offering countries billions of dollars to lock down their countries.

Belarus refused, but it looks like every country that did lock down was paid to do so.

You can see why Khan would accept such a deal. But it did not pay off.

RT:

Pakistan’s National Assembly has passed a vote of no-confidence against Prime Minister Imran Khan on Sunday, with 176 lawmakers out of 342 voting against him. The speaker of the parliament’s lower house Asad Qaisar, who is also a member of Khan’s party, announced his resignation after adjourning the house three times throughout Saturday.

Khan PTI’s party effectively lost its majority in the National Assembly in March when seven MPs from its coalition partner decided to join the opposition’s ranks. The rivals accused the cricket star-turned-politician of mismanaging Pakistan’s economy, battered by the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as mishandling Islamabad’s foreign and internal policy.

Sunday’s motion means that Khan’s five-year term has ended early, much like that of all previous prime ministers of the country.

They’ve literally never had a Prime Minister who served a full term. They either are forced to resign or are assassinated.

The opposition will now put forward their own candidate to replace Khan as PM. On March 21, Maryam Nawaz, the vice president of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz party – the country’s leading opposition force – told journalists that the party had nominated Shehbaz Sharif as its candidate for the office, which was confirmed by Sharif himself on Thursday.

Yeah, I’m sure another Sharif will be great for the country.

Khan, in turn, had previously claimed that the opposition was doing a foreign power’s bidding, and that an “imported government” would be installed in Pakistan should he be ousted. In his Friday night address, the politician vowed that he would put up a struggle, calling on his supporters to take to the streets.

Khan previously pointed the finger at the US, which he said wanted him gone, for his attempts to carry out an independent foreign policy and his visit to Moscow in late February. The politician claimed to have a recording from the Pakistani ambassador in Washington proving the allegations.

Yeah, he also said he had a secret letter, which he was waving around.

Seems legit.

Khan is a genuine outsider, being a celebrity who got elected through popularity. That’s not really normal in Middle Eastern politics, or I guess any politics.

He was also a Pashtun, which is why he is more handsome and masculine than most Pakistanis.

Sharif don’t like it.

Bhutto don’t like it either.

If Khan hadn’t fallen prey to this coronavirus hoax, and held the economy together, he could have pushed the popular populist-Islam thing and probably changed the status of Pakistan, creating a more stable country backed by China. But doing the virus thing and allowing the economy to unravel created a point of attack.

We’re seeing this many places now. Sri Lanka, for example. The West paid these countries to destroy their own economies; now they’re using the destruction of their economies as a revolutionary battering ram.

I don’t know what these countries thought was going to happen.

It would be cool if Khan could cut a deal with the military and do some kind of Sisi type coup, but from what I’ve seen on Indian TV, the military is standing with the opposition.

As far as the US supporting the opposition – again, I’m sure that’s true, but Pakistan is way too chaotic of a country for them to really run any kind of hardcore political occupation there long-term.

This current situation is so contentious, given Khan’s large support base, that there’s a pretty good chance Sharif will get assassinated. Also, if Khan’s street protests don’t work, he’s going to have to flee the country to keep from being assassinated or imprisoned.

Pakistan is a super wacky place, I can tell you this.