ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah on Tuesday said the option of invoking an emergency in the country was available in the constitution, amid a deepening row between the Supreme Court and the government over delay in provincial elections.
The article 232 of the constitution allows the president to declare a state of emergency in case the country is threatened by war or external aggression, or by internal disturbance beyond the power of a provincial government to control. However, the National Assembly, the lower house of Pakistan parliament, has to approve the declaration within 30 days of its imposition.
Sanaullah’s comments came after the top court nullified a decision by the election regulator to postpone polls in the Punjab province and announced the elections on May 14, following days of hearings on a petition filed by ex-premier Imran Khan’s party.
“When circumstances develop, the option of emergency is stated in the constitution,” Sanaullah told reporters outside the Supreme Court.
“That article is there in the constitution and it has not gone anywhere.”
The government of PM Shehbaz Sharif has expressed its lack of confidence in the three-member bench, led by chief Justice Umar Ata Bandial, that announced the verdict, and said the judges were “biased” against it, leading to a constitutional crisis in the South Asian country already suffering from economic woes.
In his address with parliament, PM Sharif described as the “murder of justice” the actions taken with regard to provincial elections in the last couple of days.
Late military ruler Gen (retired) Pervez Musharraf had imposed an emergency in Pakistan in November 2007 that lasted for around one-and-a-half month, during which the constitution of Pakistan was suspended. During this period, Musharraf controversially held both positions of the president and the army chief.
Facing a treason case for the imposition of emergency rule, the former premier had to leave the country in 2016. A court even sentenced him to death in absentia in 2019 on treason charges but the verdict was later overturned.
