How Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Imran Khan, Lost Vote of No Confidence

The Story
Embattled Prime Minister Imran Khan of Pakistan has been removed after losing a parliamentary vote of no confidence.

How did he lose?
Khan’s exit from office had become a matter of time after he was abandoned by coalition allies, alienated from the military leadership, and faced with an exodus of parliamentarians from the party he founded, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), as well as the opposition’s gain of majority support in the parliament. But Khan is not alone.

How do you mean?
None of Khan’s predecessors completed their term. The latest PM to not complete his term, Khan continues a trend since Pakistan’s independence in 1947. He is, however, the first prime minister to have lost a vote of no confidence in the parliament. One of his cabinet members, Fawad Chaudhry, (in a glimpse of how Khan lost support) said his decision-making can be rash. “His idealism often beats his rationality. In one way, that’s great, but in other ways, it’s not so good.”

What is Khan saying?
In his reaction after losing the vote of no confidence, Khan said freedom struggle begins again. “Though the country became an independent state in 1947, the freedom struggle has begun again, against a foreign conspiracy of regime change”, he said. He had claimed that his travails were due to a conspiracy between the opposition and foreign powers who wanted to remove him from office, because of his favorable disposition to Russia and China.