Top Pakistan court likely to rule today

Pakistan’s top court could rule on Thursday on Prime Minister Imran Khan’s move to block an opposition attempt to oust him, a step his critics say is unconstitutional and has touched off political turmoil.

Khan, a former cricket star, lost his parliamentary majority last week and had faced a no-confidence vote tabled by the opposition that he was expected to lose on Sunday.

But the deputy speaker of parliament, a member of Khan’s party, threw out the motion, ruling it was part of a foreign conspiracy and unconstitutional. Khan then dissolved parliament.

The stand-off has thrown the nuclear-armed country of 220 million people, ruled by the military for extended periods since independence in 1947, into a full-blown constitutional crisis.

The opposition has challenged the decision to block the vote in the Supreme Court, which began deliberating the case on Monday. On Wednesday, lawyers for Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party launched their defence.

Ali Zafar, a lawyer for President Arif Alvi who is a party ally of Khan, said the court should not involve itself in parliamentary procedure.

“My humble submission would be that if your lordships start monitoring parliamentary affairs, there would be no end to that,” he told the panel of five judges.

The Supreme Courtwill reconvene on Thursday at around 9:30 a.m. (0430 GMT). Chief Justice Umar Ata Bandial said on Wednesday he wanted to wrap up the hearings. “Let’s start early from tomorrow to conclude the case,” he said.

The court could order parliament to be reconstituted, call for fresh elections, or bar Khan from power if he is found to have violated the constitution.

It could also decide that it cannot intervene in parliamentary affairs.

Pressure mounting

Pakistan’s military is facing growing calls from the opposition to weigh in on the legitimacy of Khan’s complaints about a foreign plot against him, which he said was being orchestrated by the United States. Washington dismissed the accusation.

Khan, like many Pakistanis, criticised the 20-year-long U.S. intervention in neighbouring Afghanistan, which came to an end in August last year with the withdrawal of U.S.-led foreign forces and the return of the Islamist Taliban to power.

A senior opposition leader, Maryam Nawaz, said the military should publicly clarify whether it had told a top-level security meeting that the United States had conspired with the opposition to topple his government, as Khan has said it did.