What happens if God forbid a serving Prime Minister of Pakistan were to pass away

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Imran Khan tested positive for Covid-19, State Minister for Health Dr Faisal Sultan announced on Saturday, two days after the former received a vaccine jab.

The prime minister was administered the vaccine dose during the second phase of the vaccination process in the country in which people over 60 years of age are receiving shots.

The fact that the prime minister contracted the disease and is now self-isolating has raised questions about how the government would function without him at a time of global crisis.

While he is self-isolating and taking good care of himself as his ministers suggested, what would happen if the prime minister’s case of coronavirus were to become more serious or even incapacitate him and his team?

Under the country’s codified constitution, the answer is unclear. One expert said if such an eventuality arises, a designated Senior Federal Minister automatically takes charge as acting Prime Minister. However, such an appointment was last made by the PPP government in 2008. The PML-N made no such inclusions in its federal cabinet nor has the current PTI government. Therefore it is unclear who will takeover as acting PM from the federal cabinet if such a scenario were to present itself.

Up until 1985, before being removed, a specific section of instructions following the untimely and sudden demise of the country’s PM was laid out in the constitution, which gave the president powers to appoint a senior federal minister (seniority based on tenure rather than designation) as acting PM, and then call an NA session for a fresh PM election.

With only an unwieldy collection of sometimes contradictory precedents to go by, there is no simple, formally-enshrined procedure or succession scenario in the Constitution, the expert added.

As things stand there is a likelihood of there being no head of government at the helm until a National Assembly session is called and a PM is elected from the house. This poses a serious security challenge for a nuclear armed country that has equally equipped enemies in the region.

“We’ve not been in that kind of situation since 1951 when sitting prime minister Liaquat Ali Khan was assassinated [while addressing a public meeting in Rawalpindi],” a constitutional expert told Pakistan Today. “We’ve not had to think about it from that point of view before.”

When pointed out, he said the accidental death of former president Gen Ziaul Haq was “different”, since “he had entered the office by virtue of a martial law”.

In neighbouring India, such an eventuality has happened thrice. The first time was in 1964 when the country’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru died of cardiac arrest in office. Then-president Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan administered the oath of office of the prime minister to the senior-most minister in the cabinet, Gulzarilal Nanda, as caretaker head of the government until a regular prime minister, Lal Bahadur Shastri, was elected.

Shastri, too, died two years later in Tashkent, Uzbekistan where he had gone to sign a peace agreement with President Ayub Khan after the 1965 war between the arch-rival neighbours. Again the president appointed a caretaker prime minister.

The third time this happened was after the assassination of Indira Gandhi in 1984. But this time, the president, instead of appointing a caretaker prime minister, appointed Rajeev Gandhi, an MLA and Indira’s son as caretaker head of the government.

During the pandemic, Eswatini Prime Minister Ambrose Dlamini remains the only high-profile politician to have died of coronavirus. He passed away in December.

Regarding Prime Minister Imran Khan’s vaccination the Ministry of National Health Services (MNHS) said in a tweet that the PM “was not fully vaccinated” when he contracted the disease. Khan, it said, only received the first dose and, that too, “merely 2 days ago which is too soon for any vaccine” to show results.

“Anti-bodies develop 2-3 weeks after 2nd dose of 2-dose COVID vaccines.”

In any case, health experts believe it is likely Khan was infected prior to being vaccinated. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), national health agency of the United States, says the vaccine does not infect patients with the disease, but those who may have contracted the virus before they are vaccinated can become ill after a shot because it takes a few weeks for the body to build immunity.