The coalition government wanted to blackmail the Supreme Court, which would resume its hearing on a petition that challenges the ruling of the Punjab Assembly deputy speaker in the election for the provincial chief minister, PTI leader Fawad Chaudhry said on Monday.

On Saturday, Hamza Shahbaz was sworn in for the second time as the Punjab chief minister, after the deputy speaker refused to count 10 PML-Q votes. PTI’s petition against the ruling was accepted and the court is in session today to decide the case.

On Monday, however, the government and its allies (PML-N, PPP, JUI-F and other parties), held a press conference saying that they wanted a full bench of all the 13 Supreme Court judges and not the existing three-judge bench (led by the chief justice) to hear it.

After their press conference, PTI leader Fawad Chaudhry held a press conference and said that the coalition government was trying to pressure the Supreme Court, in order to get a ruling it wanted. He accused the coalition of using social media to spread contempt against the Supreme Court.

“Around 529 Twitter accounts have been identified and they have posted around 11,000 tweets against the Supreme Court,” he said.

The #Supreme_Court_Of_Pakistan had close to 50,000 tweets a few hours later, while another hashtag “Bench Fixing” was also trending in connection with the same case. PML-N leader Maryam Nawaz used the cricket reference of “match-fixing” and equated “bench fixing” with it as she, along with coalition govt partners, demanded the formation of the full bench court to hear the case. Aaj News couldn’t verify Fawad Chaudhry’s claim about specific accounts tweeting against the top court due to the volume of data.

The PTI leader criticized the coalition for holding the the PDM conference Monday. He said that when the Supreme Court had given the ruling against the NA speaker following Imran Khan’s no-confidence vote, they had respected the court’s decision.

“We didn’t do any press conferences against the SC,” he said. “We respected their decision.”

Chaudhry raised issues against the ruling coalition’s full-court demand. On Sunday, the ruling parties submitted a joint statement to the Supreme Court, demanding a full-court hearing for the deputy speaker ruling.

“They’re just trying to buy time,” he said. “If the Supreme Court accepts the demand, then what’s left of the Chief Justice’s autonomy? The proper procedure is to hear the decision, then file a petition for a full-court hearing against the verdict.”

In reference to the deputy speaker’s ruling, the PTI leader said that the speaker had pulled the letter “out of his hair” and given the verdict.

“When the Supreme Court asked him which part of their judgment he had relied on,” the PTI leader said, “the deputy speaker ran from court. In fact, rumors are that he fled the country.”

Chaudhry said that the incumbent leaders should prepare to pack their bags and leave.

“The people who took the oaths yesterday, the governor of Punjab, and Hamza Shahbaz, are all in contempt of court,” he said. “You won’t see them in power again.”

Chaudhry said that the Pakistani people had spoken and that Hamza Shahbaz had only occupied the Punjab chief minister seat due to the Supreme Court’s ruling. He said that the ruling coalition wanted to seat the minority party’s leader in both the center and the government.

“In the center, the leader of the party that has 84 votes sits as Prime Minister, while the party that has 155 votes is in the opposition,” he said. “They want to do the same in Punjab. They want to put PTI in the opposition, despite the fact that it has 186 votes as compared to the coalition’s 178.”

Chaudhry criticized the ruling coalition’s attack on journalists in the past three months. He alluded to the attacks on Imran Riaz Khan, Sami Ibrahim, and Arsalan Khalid among others.