AFTER ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ attitude of President Arif Alvi towards the issue of convening first session of the newly-elected National Assembly, the National Assembly Secretariat has summoned the Lower House of parliament to meet at 10.00 a.m. on February 29. The Secretariat said the NA session is bound to take place on the 21st day of the general election under Article 91 of the Constitution.
It is a sorry state of affairs that attempts are made to make even routine matters controversial for the sake of political expediency by one party or the other. The President did not approve the summary for convening of the NA session on the plea that the House was incomplete without allocation of reserved seats for the Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC), the umbrella parliamentary party of the newly elected pro-PTI independents. However, one may point out that the same is the position in provincial assemblies where reserved seats have not been announced for the SIC but their sessions were convened, members took oath, elections of both Speaker and Deputy Speaker and also those of the Chief Ministers were held in the case of Punjab and Sindh. Vacancies in any House are never considered to be a hurdle in the functioning of that House and we have witnessed in the past that they worked smoothly even when by-elections to a large number of seats were due. The President’s refusal is seen by some experts in the context of clash of interests as a delay would mean a delay in the conduct of presidential election and continuation of the incumbent President in his office. Political parties and his opponents also believe that Dr Alvi has been repeating something that has been a blot on his stay in the office: delaying the approval of his opponents’ summaries. As against this, outgoing Speaker of the Punjab Assembly Sibtain Khan refused to be entangled in any controversy on the day of the oath-taking of the members and election of the Speaker saying he wants to go home in a respectable manner. The attempt to delay the first session of the NA and refusal to sign the summary in this regard is rightly being viewed as an effort to trigger unnecessary constitutional and legal controversies that have the potential to make the entire system hostage.
