ISLAMABAD: On Monday, National Assembly Speaker Raja Pervaiz Ashraf was forced to call the lower chamber of parliament’s first session at 10 a.m. on February 29 after President Arif Alvi declined to do so on the grounds that the house was “incomplete.”
The president stated that he could not call the session as requested since the lower house was not complete, in response to a summary provided by the Parliamentary Affairs Division last week. Political parties became enraged with his delay, with the PPP and PML-N urging the president not to misuse his authority as head of state.
Spectators speculated that he intended to postpone the meeting until the Election Commission of Pakistan released a notification about the Sunni Ittehad Council’s (SIC) reserved seats, which the majority of MPs backed by the PTI have joined.
As mandated by the Constitution, the National Assembly’s first session must be called within 21 days following the general elections on February 8. “The National Assembly will convene on the twenty-first day succeeding the day when a general election to the assembly takes place, except sooner summoned by the president,” states Section 91(2) of the Constitution.
As per a high-ranking representative of the National Assembly Secretariat, the president bears the responsibility of convening the NA within a 21-day period; failing which, the secretariat may declare the meeting. He said that all preparations for the inaugural session of the new legislature had been completed by the secretariat.
Dawn was informed by a NA secretariat official that the president was required by the 18th Amendment to convene the NA session within a span of 21 days.
He claimed that after late military commander Pervez Musharraf postponed calling the NA in 2002, that clause was added to the Constitution. He said that the president could not stop the meeting since it was “incomplete.”
“The president is waiting for the ten women’s SIC reserved seats, but he has forgotten that there are more seats available than that because many returned candidates ran for office and won votes from multiple constituencies,” the speaker added.
Media representatives have been invited by the National Assembly Secretariat’s media wing to cover Thursday’s opening session of the 16th National Assembly.
