Rana Sanaullah warns of governor’s rule in Punjab if entry to province restricted

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Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah on Wednesday warned of imposing governor’s rule in Punjab if he was restricted from entering the province.

Addressing a press conference in Islamabad, he said he had already begun drafting a summary for the imposition of governor’s rule, which is moved by the interior ministry, because of the kind of statements opposition political leaders had been making.

“If my entry is restricted, it will be grounds for governor’s rule,” he asserted.

The interior minister’s presser comes hours after PML-Q’s Chaudhry Parvez Elahi was sworn in as the Punjab chief minister following the Supreme Court verdict which declared Hamza Shehbaz’s victory in the July 22 run-off election as void.

President Dr Arif Alvi administered the oath to Elahi at Aiwan-i-Sadr in Islamabad. Elahi had to rush from Lahore to the federal capital after Punjab Governor Balighur Rehman refused to carry out the job.

Elahi’s swearing-in capped a months-long saga over the provincial chief executive that began with Usman Buzdar’s resignation.

During today’s press conference, the minister said the SC’s decision had “created complications and destabilised the political situation” because of which the rupee was tanking and the stock market was falling.

Even a second-grader would interpret Article 63-A — which is related to the disqualification of lawmakers over defection — as saying that the votes of dissident lawmakers would be counted in the election, he claimed.

He further stated that the SC’s recent verdict contradicted the Election Commission of Pakistan’s (ECP) decision to de-seat 25 dissident PTI lawmakers who had voted for Hamza in the April 16 election, which was, in turn, based on an order of the apex court.

The ECP’s verdict had been based on MPAs not following the instructions of the party head whereas the SC had stated the parliamentary party head’s instructions should be followed, he stated.

He went on to say that Hamza should have remained the chief minister since the votes of those 25 dissident lawmakers would not be subtracted from his tally in the April election.

“It is my opinion that the interpretation of Article 63-A will not sustain. Any lawyer will say it amounts to rewriting the Constitution. It is not the SC’s authority to rewrite the Constitution and we will defend the parliament’s authority,” Sanaullah said.

“This situation is unfortunate and we want to restrict our words […] An independent, uncontroversial and impartial judiciary is any country’s basic need. No country can progress without it.”

The interior minister said that the incumbent government did not seek to curb the judiciary’s authority but wanted to “regulate” it.

If the chief justice took suo motu notice and formed benches in consensus with the advice of fellow jurists, then letters like the one circulating since yesterday would not happen, he said, while referring to the one written by Justice Qazi Faez Isa to the Judicial Commission of Pakistan.

In response to a question about whether the PML-N-led coalition government in the Centre would find it difficult to rule now that they no longer had control of Punjab, Sanaullah said: “The federal government has its own role. It is present everywhere. It has so many departments and their resources and budgets are bigger than provincial departments. This kind of conversation is being done by people who neither have intelligence nor knowledge.

“The federal government is a coalition government and it is present everywhere,” he emphasised.

Separately, PML-N Vice President Maryam Nawaz also criticised the court’s decision and termed it “judicial murder”.

“How will you justify this blatant injustice? This is judicial murder but the victim this time is justice. What have you done, chief justice?” she said in a tweet.