ISLAMABAD: President Asif Zardari postponed his parliamentary address and instead called a joint session of both houses of parliament for April 18. The National Assembly Secretariat released a six-point agenda for the meeting on Monday, April 18, which includes laying an ordinance issued by the interim government and a calling attention notice regarding the issue of India building a barrage on the Ravi River.
“The joint session of the Parliament has been called by President Asif Ali Zardari on Thursday, April 18, 2024 at 4 p.m. In accordance with the authority granted by Articles 54(1) and 56(3) of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, the President has called a joint session of Parliament, according to a statement released by the Presidency.
It stated, without providing an explanation, that “the earlier notification to call the joint session of the parliament on April 16 stands cancelled.”
Dawn, however, was informed by sources in the NA Secretariat that the president had acted on the request of the lawmakers, the majority of whom were from the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), who had voiced some reluctance to call the joint sitting so soon after the Eid holidays because they preferred to spend more time in their home districts.
Zardari is scheduled to address parliament for a record-breaking seventh time, making history.
According to the sources, the president postponed the joint sitting for a few days at the request of party members who visited him in Garhi Khuda Bakhsh, where he had spoken at a public gathering commemorating the party’s founder chairman Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s death anniversary.
The seventh address
During his five-year term as President, which ran from September 2008 to September 2013, President Zardari addressed the National Assembly and Senate six times. This will be his seventh address to the joint session of the legislature. No president had ever addressed as many joint sittings as President Zardari did on April 16, 2013, making his sixth address a record as well.
Mr. Zardari was granted an additional six opportunities, instead of only five, to address a joint sitting of the National Assembly due to the distaste that former military ruler Pervez Musharraf harbored for it.
Only once, in 2004, in the face of fierce opposition protests, did General Musharraf address the joint session as president; he did not return to the parliament until August 2008, when he resigned.
Even after the elections in February 2008, he had not called a joint sitting. President Zardari then fulfilled this constitutional requirement, and ever since, his predecessors Mamnoon Hussain and Dr. Arif Alvi have carried on the tradition of calling a joint sitting at the start of each parliamentary year.
Members of the opposition Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI), who have been protesting the conviction and imprisonment of former prime minister and party founder Imran Khan as well as the alleged manipulation of the general elections on February 8th, are expected to mount a fierce defense of President Zardari.
National Assembly session
The National Assembly Secretariat has released a six-point agenda for the meeting scheduled for Monday, which is today. Included in it are two calling-attention notices: one from independent Rai Hassan Nawaz Khan, “regarding Indian aggression on the water rights of Pakistan through its recent completion of the Shahpur Kandi Barrage on the Ravi River,” and another from PML-N MNA Malik Bashir Awan, regarding the “shortage of urea fertiliser” in the nation.
In addition, as required by Article 89(2) of the Constitution, Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar will present the Apostille Ordinance, 2024 (No. I of 2024) to the National Assembly.
As mandated by Section 16 sub-section (2) of the Elections Act, 2017, Law Minister Azam Nazeer Tarar will give the Election Commission of Pakistan’s Annual Report 2022.
