Only House can remove me: Gilani

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Pakistan Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani said on Friday that nobody but the parliament can remove him from his office.

“I am an elected Prime Minister and only the parliament can remove me since it has elected me”, Mr Gilani said while speaking in the National Assembly.

“The Speaker of the House can disqualify me as the Prime Minister. Nobody else can send me home”, he added.

On Thursday, Mr Gilani was convicted by the Supreme Court for refusing to write to the Swiss authorities to reopen corruption cases against President Asif Ali Zardari. The PM was given a symbolic 30-second sentence after which he walked out of the court to continue his routine business.
Mr Gilani said he wanted to take the parliament into confidence on the Supreme Court’s verdict against him in the contempt of court case.

“The parliament is the country’s supreme institution. My only crime is to protect the constitution”, he said.

He said if the parliament disqualifies him he will accept its decision and go back home. Mr Gilani said the federal law minister and his counsel have clarified various controversies created on the apex court’s verdict. He said, “We did not accept the steps taken by the dictators in the past and worked for democracy”.

Mr Gilani assured that he would never support derailment of democracy, even when he is not in power.
He said that the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) worked with the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) and did not support derailment of democracy. “We signed the Charter of Democracy with PML-N”, he added.

He also said that with the exile of PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif after the 1999 military coup, the democracy suffered‚ “but we continued efforts to protect democracy”.