ISLAMABAD: Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, the top Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) leader, said on Saturday his decision of not supporting his cousin, Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi, during the chief minister’s election in Punjab owed to the criticism of state institutions by former prime minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party.
Hussain’s letter to the deputy speaker of Punjab Assembly, Dost Mohammad Mazari, on Friday changed the outcome of the electoral contest since he decided that his party would support the candidate of the ruling coalition, Hamza Shehbaz.
The letter, which Mazari read out for the voting process, was used to invalidate 10 PML-Q votes cast in Elahi’s favor since the deputy speaker said they violated rules determined by the country’s top court in a recent verdict related to the interpretation of Article 63-A of the constitution that deals with the disqualification of federal and provincial lawmakers.
While the deputy speaker’s ruling paved the way for Hamza Shehbaz’s victory, it also led to a new debate about whether the party line in such matters was determined by its chief or leader of the parliamentary party within an assembly.
“Pervaiz Elahi was my candidate for Chief Minister and he is today and will be tomorrow, but he cannot be the candidate of PTI,” Hussain wrote in a Twitter post. “Having had a relationship with [state] institutions for thirty years, how can I support their critics? If there are institutions, there is stability in Pakistan.”
The PML-Q chief said leaders of all political parties should rise above their personal interests and move toward reconciliation since the country could not be allowed to “witness more crises.”
“Forget everything and give up confrontational politics while only keeping national security in mind,” he added.
Elahi has already challenged the ruling of the Punjab Assembly’s deputy speaker in the Supreme Court, making the judges give a preliminary ruling that Hamza Shehbaz would continue to work as the “trustee chief minister” until Monday.
The ruling coalition has also asked the chief justice of Pakistan to constitute a full court to hear the case while describing it as “an important national, political and constitutional matter.”