Pakistani court disqualifies PM from office

Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, center, waves upon his arrival at the Supreme Court for a hearing in Islamabad, Pakistan, April 26, 2012. / AP Photo

Updated at 7:54 a.m. ET

(CBS/AP) ISLAMABAD - Pakistan's top court declared on Tuesday that the country's prime minister was 'disqualified' from office due to an earlier contempt conviction, delivering what appeared to be a fatal blow against the premier's political career and ushering in political turmoil

In its ruling, the Supreme Court ordered the country's election commission to formally dismiss Yousuf Reza Gilani and said he was no longer the prime minister.

Gilani's party, which heads a ruling coalition, announced that it accepts the ruling, CBS News Islamabad bureau chief Maria Usman reports. The party expected to decide on a nominee for prime minister at a meeting Tuesday night.

If the Pakistani parliament accepts the decision of the Supreme Court, the ruling coalition's nominee would have to be appointed in a vote of confidence.

Gilani was convicted in April for refusing to open a corruption probe against his boss, President Asif Ali Zardari. He has been refusing to step down. The Supreme Court ruling came in response to petitions filed against Gilani for not standing down after that conviction.

Party supporters have said that they believe they have the support in parliament to elect a new prime minister in the event of Gilani's disqualification.

A senior official at the office of President Asif Ali Zardari told CBS News' Farhan Bokhari that the president is already looking at a short list of potential new prime ministers.

[melpol12]

The greatest contribution China can make to the Middle-East is to flood it with 50 million Chinese professionals. Arabs will be busy praying while a wave of computer geeks will turn the sands of Arabia into computer chips.

[venusvegasvada]

Going to be hard to get out of that one.

[Lerianis4]

Not really. You can run for public office in America even if you are a convicted felon, so I don't understand why other countries have this idiocy.

[robin951]

It's funny how everyone ignores what is happening these days. It's like there is too much information and we just all don't have enough time to process it all, so we can't take lessons from even the small stuff anymore. If we tried to read everything that was published every day we couldn't even do that. Like this massive Cornell clinical study that benefits Chromadex (CDXC) that no investor knows about.
http://weill.cornell.edu/news/releases/wcmc/wcmc_2012/06_14_12-2.shtml