As Prime Minister Imran Khan has announced he will seek the vote of confidence from the National Assembly on Saturday (March 6), his allies appear to have been slipping away gradually. 

In the first such move, sources say, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) has come up with the demand that the prime minister should visit the Karachi-based party’s secretariat in the Sindh capital if he needs its lawmakers’ vote of confidence. 

To add to this, MQM-P leaders are reported to have said, even prime minister’s visit to the party’s secretariat is not a guarantee that its lawmakers would vote in Khan’s favour. After prime minister’s visit, source say, the coordination committee of the MQM-P would decide whether to give Khan the vote of confidence or not. 

Prime Minister Imran Khan said on Wednesday that he would take the vote of confidence after Abdul Hafeez Shaikh, candidate of the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), lost the election for the Senate seat to Yusuf Raza Gilani, former prime minister and senior leader of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), on March 3. 

The move came shortly after Shaikh’s defeat and before the opposition parties started calling for prime minister’s resignation and fresh elections in the country.