Following the Election Commission of Pakistan’s (ECP) decision of unseating 25 dissident members belonging to the PTI, Information Minister Marriyum Aurangzeb said the decision does not affect the Punjab government. The information minister criticised the PTI and said that the party Chairman Imran Khan was earlier hurling abuses at the commission and was asking his followers to attack its office, but now – after receiving a decision in his party’s favour – he is all praises for the ECP. She emphasised that the decision was “only applied to the 25 dissident PTI members”. Aurangzeb said that the unseating of these 24 members does not affect Chief Minister Punjab Hamza Shahbaz, elections, and the Punjab government as the allied parties already have the votes of 177 members. Berating the former, PTI-led government, the PML-N leader said that “these are the people who want to cling on to power no matter how much they hurt the country’s situation”.
She further said that the dissident members are those who showed a lack of confidence in their party’s decision and decided to vote for someone else, adding that the PTI’s defecting parliamentarians voted against Khan publicly.
The information minister went on to say that the dissident members were eligible to cast their votes in the no-confidence motion. “They knew about the consequences and voted against their party and in favour of the nation,” she said.
She added that those 25 members have not been unseated but their action is akin to a slap on Khan’s face. “They have the right to challenge the ECP’s decision,” said the information minister.
