ISLAMABAD, March 11: The parliamentary battle over the sweeping presidential powers will move to the Senate on Wednesday when the newly elected 100-seat upper house meets for its inauguration and election of its chairman and a deputy chairman.
Opposition parties have said their more than 40 senators-elect will not take oath under the constitution as amended by President Pervez Musharraf’s controversial Legal Framework Order. The LFO, they say, has demolished parliament’s sovereignty in the originally envisaged parliamentary system of government.
But political sources said the opposition senators, following what their colleagues did in the National Assembly in November, might take oath by declaring that they were doing so under the un-amended 1973 Constitution.
However, a lot will depend on whether former Senate chairman Wasim Sajjad, who will preside over the inaugural session called at 9am, raises any objection to this or allows the opposition senators to have their way.
The oath-taking session, which is likely to see some fireworks over the LFO, will be followed by the election of Senate chairman and deputy chairman with the ruling coalition led by Pakistan Muslim League-Q apparently certain to win both offices.
The coalition has named PML-Q’s former Sindh governor Mohammedmian Soomro for chairman and Khalilur Rehman from the NWFP for deputy chairman.
The opposition’s protest against the LFO forced an indefinite adjournment of the National Assembly on Monday after keeping the house paralysed for a week.
But opposition parties are planning to requisition another session of the assembly to keep the LFO row in limelight, opposition sources said.
It was not known when the requisition request would be handed to Speaker Chaudhry Amir Hussain, who must call the session within 15 days after receiving it.
“This issue is the question of life and death for Pakistan because whenever Pakistan was forcibly deprived of the Constitution, it resulted in disaster,” PML-N spokesman Mohammad Siddiqul Farooq said.
He told Dawn MNAs from the PML-N and People’s Party Parliamentarians had signed the requisition and sent to the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal for signature of its MNAs.
REVIVAL: The Senate inauguration will mark the revival of the amended constitution and the completion of both houses of parliament since they were dissolved by General Musharraf after he seized power in the October 1999 coup.
A presidential notification issued in November had said the Constitution’s Articles 59 to 63 (relating to the upper house’s structure) and from 232 to 239 (relating to declaration of emergency and constitutional amendments) would come into force when members elected to the Senate take oath.
The government says the LFO has already amended the constitution. But opposition parties say the president had no authority to amend the constitution, which can be done by a two-thirds majority of the two houses of parliament.
