Screengrab of National Assembly Speaker Raja Pervaiz Ashraf administering oath of office to C.M. Hamza Shehbaz
Two weeks after being elected the Chief Minister of Punjab, Hamza Shehbaz was sworn into office on Saturday by National Assembly Speaker Raja Pervaiz Ashraf after President Arif Alvi and Punjab Governor Omar Sarfaraz Cheema failed to earlier orders of the Lahore High Court (LHC) directing them to do so.
Held at Governor’s House, the ceremony was attended by nearly a thousand people, including members of the Sharif family, including Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) Vice-President Maryam Nawaz.
“Both the decisions of this court, despite having binding effect, have been ignored deliberately by the President of Pakistan as well as by the Governor of the Punjab. The governor through his conduct has also made himself ‘impracticable’ for the oath to be made before him,” read the judgment issued by Justice Jawad Hassan on the third petition filed by the C.M.-elect seeking directing for the administration of his oath.
Earlier, on April 22, LHC Chief Justice Mohammad Ameer Bhatti had directed the president to resolve the impasse by nominating a person to administer the oath under Article 104 of the Constitution. However, Alvi failed to comply with the order. Hamza subsequently filed another petition seeking new directions, with the CJ issuing a ruling on April 27 advising the governor to either ensure the administration of oath to the newly-elected chief minister himself or through a nominee by April 28. This order was also unimplemented.
The argument of the PTI—to which both the president and governor belong—is that former chief minister Usman Buzdar’s resignation did not fulfill constitutional requirements, as it wasn’t handwritten and was also addressed to then-prime minister Imran Khan rather than then-governor Chaudhry Mohammad Sarwar. Early on Saturday morning, Governor Cheema “rejected” the resignation and “restored” the provincial cabinet. Ahead of the oath-taking of Hamza, the “restored” provincial cabinet convened at the Punjab Assembly, but it was unclear what it hoped to achieve through this exercise.
There has been no official notification issued of the rejection of Buzdar’s resignation or the restoration of his cabinet. To prevent any unrest, a heavy contingent of police was deployed to the Punjab Assembly and the Governor’s House, which the PTI also rejected as “illegal.”
While the oath was being administered to Hamza, the LHC took up an intra-court appeal against the order of Justice Jawad Hassan. A divisional bench has commenced hearing on the petition filed by 17 members of the Punjab Assembly claiming that Hamza’s election was not held as per the Constitution.
The LHC order directing oath-taking for Hamza had observed that while passing the orders the court enunciated the principles of law having binding effect under Article 201, but that had been disregarded not only by President Alvi but also by Punjab Governor Cheema, causing non-fulfillment of their constitutional duty. This, it warned, violated Article 5 of the Constitution.
The ruling also cited a Supreme Court judgment that had held “adherence to the Constitution and the law by the citizens, who are officials or otherwise, is mandatory. Non-compliance of the Constitution and the law makes a citizen liable for action, in accordance with law.”