Pakistan Parliament Approves Emergency and Governor's Rule in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 214 to 56

ISLAMABAD. A joint sitting of Pakistan's Parliament on Thursday approved the emergency and governor's rule imposed in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, voting 214 to 56 to endorse the federal takeover of the northwestern province's administration.

The province has been under the measures since October 11, when President Asif Ali Zardari proclaimed an emergency and governor's rule on the advice of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. The federal government says the provincial government, run by Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, the party of jailed former prime minister Imran Khan, had disengaged from the fight against terrorism and failed to tackle rising militancy.

The vote and the rules behind it

Federal Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Tariq Fazal Chaudhry tabled the two resolutions, one under Article 232 of the Constitution, which covers a proclamation of emergency, and one under Article 234, which allows governor's rule when a provincial government cannot be run in line with the Constitution. A governor's rule proclamation laid before a joint sitting lapses after two months unless the sitting approves its continuation, and it cannot stay in force for more than six months in total. Law Minister Azam Nazeer Tarar told the sitting that a special mechanism had been set up to run the province's affairs during the emergency.

The National Assembly and the Senate had each endorsed the emergency a day earlier, on October 14, in separate votes that PTI members walked out of.

The government's case

Tarar said the KP government had been advised again and again to take effective steps against terrorism, and he criticised PTI leaders for not attending the funerals of people killed in terrorist attacks. Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar defended the measures as constitutionally justified and needed for security. He asked who had allowed militants of the banned Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan to return to the country, and he criticised the provincial government over 800 billion rupees of spending that he said should have helped prevent the present situation if it had been used well.

Opposition pushback

Opposition members protested during the sitting, some wearing black armbands, and challenged the count before Speaker Ayaz Sadiq ordered a count of the votes that produced the 214 to 56 result. PTI leaders dispute the federal claims. They argue that the security case is being used to weaken their party, which was preparing a long march from KP to Islamabad to demand Khan's release when the measures were imposed. Sadiq also invited PTI to hold talks in the National Assembly, and production orders were issued for two PTI lawmakers, Sanaullah Mastikhel and Dawar Kundi.

During the sitting, lawmakers offered prayers for the children and the teacher killed in Thursday's school roof collapse in Peshawar, the provincial capital.

The approval gives the federal government the parliamentary backing the Constitution requires. How long the arrangement lasts, and whether the courts or talks with PTI change it, are now the open questions in Islamabad.