May 27, 2008	Tuesday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 21, 1429

ISLAMABAD: A fledgling government on Monday called the National Assembly to meet for its first budget session on June 2 as new political and economic storms appeared gathering on the horizon.

A government source said both the present National Assembly’s second regular session and one of the Senate proposed to begin on June 4 would be meant to pass the present government’s first budget for fiscal 2008-09, but political sources said the ruling coalition would have the option to use the two houses of parliament in a possible confrontation with a discredited presidency before the budget is unveiled on June 7.

The budget sessions of both the houses are likely to be marked by heated debates over the prevailing economic hardships due to rocketing food and fuel prices, wheat and flour shortages, power cuts and the new government’s response to meet the challenge with likely relief to consumers and salaried classes.

But there is expected to be an equally sharp focus on a troubled coalition’s failure so far to redeem its pledge to reinstate the deposed judges of superior courts.

The National Assembly, inaugurated on March 17, held its first regular session from April 10 to 25 that was prorogued without passing a promised resolution for the reinstatement of the judges sacked under President Musharraf’s controversial emergency proclamation of Nov 3, 2007.

The new plan, devised by the PPP after the PML-N left the cabinet as the second largest coalition partner in protest over the delay on the judges issue, is to have the resolution for the restoration of the pre-Nov 3 judiciary passed by a joint session of the 342-seat National Assembly and the 100-seat Senate.

But there was no indication yet when such a joint session would be held, which must be called by the president on the advice of the prime minister.

While two deadlines for the reinstatement of the deposed judges were allowed to pass, the PPP has now come out with a comprehensive constitution-amendment package whose proposed aims include depriving the president of his controversial powers and giving them back to parliament, or the prime minister, renaming the NWFP as Pakhtunkhawa and abolishing the Constitution’s concurrent legislative list to grant more autonomy to provinces.

Law Minister Farook H. Naek had initially indicated last week that the package might be brought to parliament before the budget, but both PPP co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, in line with a new party policy of prolonging the guessing game, have said it could happen before or after the budget.

There seemed little chance of the package coming before the budget because the PPP was yet to share the document with other coalition partners — PML-N, ANP and JUI — and the government was still a minority in the Senate, not to speak of a two-thirds majority needed to pass a constitutional amendment.

However, political sources said the coalition could arrange a two-thirds majority in a joint sitting of both houses of parliament if it opted for an impeachment of President Musharraf for his alleged violations of the Constitution ranging from his Oct 12, 1999, coup that toppled then prime minister Nawaz Sharif to the extra-constitutional Nov 3 emergency he enforced in his now abandoned capacity as chief of the army staff.