Today (Friday), the Punjab Assembly will vote to elect a new speaker. Both the government coalition and the opposition alliance have fielded candidates for the coveted office. Following the election of Pervez Elahi as chief minister of Punjab, the seat in the Punjab Assembly became vacant.
Sibtain Khan, a PTI MPA from Mianwali, will run against PML-N candidate Saif ul Malook Khokhar in a race organised jointly by the PTI and PML-Q. After carefully reviewing them, the newly appointed assembly secretary Inayatullah Lak gave her approval to both candidates’ nomination papers.
In an endeavour to win the poll “effortlessly,” Sibtain Khan asserted that the PML-N will “fail to cause any interruption” during the speaker’s election. Everyone was able to see what had happened to the PML-Q president Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain’s letter, which the PML-N had used to win the chief minister election, he claimed.
The PML-N, PPP, and a small number of independents together make up 178 of the MPAs in the opposition to the ruling coalition’s 186.There is a good chance of an upset and a very close race.
