An ally of former Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan has won a vote of no confidence in the Punjab provincial assembly as prime minister, the latest electoral win for the popular opposition leader who is pushing for early general elections.
Bloomberg news agency reported that Chaudhry Pervez Elahi won 186 votes from the 371-member assembly.
Council Speaker Muhammad Sabtin Khan announced the result in a session that lasted more than an hour after midnight.
The vote took place despite the prime minister occupying the position temporarily, amid a lawsuit challenging his position.
Members of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif's cabinet boycotted the session, intending to contest the vote legally.
It is noteworthy that on the ninth of April last year, the opposition in Parliament succeeded in no confidence in Khan's government, which prompted him to accuse it and other parties in the country of conspiring with the United States to overthrow his government.
After only two days, parliament elected a new government that includes ministers from the parties that dropped the government of Imran Khan's Insaf party, and Shahbaz Sharif, leader of the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz Sharif's wing), was elected prime minister, which made Imran Khan describe it as an "imported government."
Khan took advantage of the street movement to promote the narrative of conspiracy and external interference to mobilize his supporters and harass the new government in the hope of forcing it to hold early elections - which has not happened until now - despite the repeated protests and demonstrations that he has led over the past months.
At the beginning of last November, and in the midst of his pursuit of this goal, Imran Khan was subjected to an assassination attempt in the city of Wazirabad in the Punjab province (east of the country), which made the political crisis enter a dark tunnel, especially after Khan was accused of the Prime Minister, Minister of Interior and a senior leader in Pakistan's military intelligence was implicated in that attempt.
Khan announced later last November his intention to dissolve the two local governments in the provinces of Khyber and Punjab and the resignation of all his party's deputies from the local parliaments in the four provinces of the country, stressing his refusal to remain under a "corrupt government," he said.
This prompted the League and the People - who, along with 9 other parties, form the current ruling coalition in Pakistan - to express their deputies' readiness to form alternative local governments in the Khyber and Punjab provinces.
The conflict is still intense between the current Pakistani government, which is led by a coalition of several parties, and the opposition led by Imran Khan, former prime minister and leader of Tehreek-e-Insaf.