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ISLAMABAD, March 20: President Pervez Musharraf on Thursday called a special session of the new National Assembly for Monday to let his political opponents elect their first prime minister after eight-and-a-half years as a parliamentary momentum seemed to leave his own office at their mercy.
An apparently swift action on a proposal from caretaker Prime Minister Mohammedmian Soomro came only a day after the National Assembly elected its first woman speaker and her deputy by more than two-thirds majorities, which showed the anti-Musharraf camp could muster enough numbers in a joint session of the two houses of parliament to impeach the president if they so wanted.
The announcement came also when the country waited with bated breath for the majority coalition of the winners of Feb 18 election to name their candidate for prime minister to end a bitter controversy that has robbed a historic transition of some of its lustre.
The candidate, under the coalition agreement, must be from the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), which has added a high drama to a prolonged suspense by calling its boy chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari from a studies break in Britain to name the person for the office that his mother, Benazir Bhutto, would have taken without question for a historic third term if she had not been assassinated in a gun-and-bomb attack in Rawalpindi on Dec 27 soon after she addressed a campaign rally.
The selection of the candidate, to be made by the 19-year-old Bilawal’s father and PPP co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari, has led to an unprecedented controversy in the party after one of its senior-most figures, Makhdoom Amin Fahim, who is also the president of its electoral arm PPP Parliamentarians, found his candidacy being blocked by a mysterious propaganda campaign against him and the talk of an alternative being sought from the most populous Punjab province rather than from the hopeful’s Sindh.
The National Assembly secretariat said in a statement the session for what the Constitution calls “ascertainment of the member who commands the confidence of majority of the members of the assembly” would begin at 4pm on Monday, while it would remain open on Sunday to receive nominations of candidates by 2pm and their scrutiny by the Speaker at 3pm.
The election will be held through what is called “division” in parliamentary parlance, in which members go to different lobbies to record their votes for candidates in accordance with the direction of their respective parties as required by an anti-defection clause of the Political Parties Act that forbids floor-crossing.
NO MANIPULATION THIS TIME: It will be the fourth prime ministerial election in a little more than five years and the first time President Musharraf will find himself unable to stop an opponent from taking that office since he seized power in an Oct 12, 1999 coup that toppled then prime minister Nawaz Sharif.
After the previous October 2002 election, the president kept the anti-defection law suspended to inspire defections mainly from the PPP to help his hand-picked Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali of the formerly ruling Pakistan Muslim League (PML) get elected prime minister in November by only a one-vote majority for a tenure that lasted only 20 months.
Mr Jamali’s two successors to complete the remainder of his five-year term --- PML president Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain for a transitional two months and Shaukat Aziz for more than three years --- were elected with comfortable majorities.
Now, whoever is nominated as the PPP candidate, possibly on Saturday or Sunday, will face only a token contest from Mr Farooq Sattar of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement as the joint candidate of the new PML-led opposition alliance.
Wednesday’s election of Dr Fehmida Mirza as the first woman to become the National Assembly speaker and Deputy Speaker Faisal Karim Kundi, both of the PPP, by more than two-thirds majorities of the 342-seat house --- securing 249-70 and 246-68 votes respectively against the opposition rivals --- served as a stark warning to a strong but an isolated president whom his opponents want to be out of their way to restore full parliamentary democracy.
The vote, which at least two of its members missed, showed the coalition could impeach the president on the oft-repeated charge of violating the Constitution as well as “gross misconduct” as it would have the required two-thirds majority in a joint sitting of the 342-seat National Assembly and 100-seat Senate with the help of a six-member anti-Musharraf “like-minded” group formed in the Senate last month and independents.
The Senate is presently left with 96 members because three members have opted to take National Assembly seats they won on Feb 18 and the death of one PML member from Balochistan.
While the coalition can hope to bag all these four seats to be filled through by-elections, the present Senate strength leaves the pro-Musharraf camp with 50 members (minus the six rebels) and his opponents with 46, whose addition to its 251 supporters in the National Assembly takes the total to 297, which will be one vote more than the 296-vote two-thirds majority of the total 443 members of both houses needed for the passage of an impeachment resolution.
But the new would-be ruling coalition, which had dismissed an impeachment move against the president in the recent past on the ground of not having the required numbers, does not seem to be seeking such a course immediately in order to allow itself to settle down in power.
It still remains short of a two-thirds majority in the Senate to be able to pass constitutional amendments passed by a two-thirds majority in each house, such as one to clip the president of his controversial powers to sack a prime minister, dissolve the National Assembly and appoint provincial governors and armed forces chiefs at his discretion.
