ISLAMABAD, May 11: The Senate will meet on Friday to begin a pre-budget session that is likely to be as hot as the prevailing weather, with the opposition planning to raise issues like power cuts, high sugar prices and law and order.
The session, due to begin at 4pm after a recess of about two months, will also be marked by a behind-the-scenes tug-of-war between two opposition alliances for the office of opposition leader, which has been lying vacant since Senate elections on March 12.
Opposition senators have given notices for moving adjournment motions seeking debates on matters such as excessive load-shedding in Karachi and other parts of the country, the recent privatisation of the Pakistan Steel Mills, demolition of old rural settlements in and around Karachi and Hyderabad and appointment of retired generals on civilian government posts, sources said.
They said the opposition would also use adjournment motions or points of order to raise its voice against high prices of sugar, petroleum products and other essential commodities.
Other issues likely to come up in the house will include law and order incidents such as the April 11 Nishtar Park bomb attack and continuing violence in Balochistan and North and South Waziristan tribal areas.
One of adjournment motions moved by members of the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) has sought a debate on a reported ban on foreign travel by some opposition parliamentarians by putting their names on the government’s Exit Control List.
TOUGH CHOICE: While Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz had re-named Wasim Sajjad to represent him as leader of the house in the Senate after the veteran senator was re-elected to the house in March, chairman Mohammedmian Soomro is faced with a tough job to name a new opposition leader from the two rival groupings eying for the office with apparently equal support among 42 opposition senators.
The Democratic Alliance has nominated Senator Raza Rabbani of the People’s Party Parliamentarians as its candidate for a second term as opposition leader with a list of 21 senators of DA parties sent to the chairman, alliance sources said.
The Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal is yet to come out about its final choice for the slot but disputes with DA on numbers, claiming the support of 22 senators by counting a DA senator, Prof Sajid Meer, on its side.
The row was triggered by Prof Meer, who was elected to the Senate in 2003 from Punjab as a nominee of the PML-N, a DA component, but his own Jamiat Ahle Hadith is one of the six parties forming the MMA.
His farewell to the PML-N could strain the developing cooperation between the two main opposition alliances and revive a long-subsided row about National Assembly Speaker’s nomination of MMA leader Maulana Fazlur Rehman as opposition leader in the lower house with minority support, an opposition source said.
