ISLAMABAD: When parliament meets in a joint session on Monday, also marking the return of a major opposition party after more than seven months’ boycott, the most important matter to be debated will be whether Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif should meet Saudi Arabia’s request to join an Arab military coalition seeking to crush a raging revolt in Yemen.

The decision by the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) on Sunday to come back to parliament it boycotted in mid-August to protest against alleged massive rigging of the 2013 general elections will add to the significance of what will be a rare session of the two houses of parliament asked to decide the nation’s role in a far-away civil war.

Know more: PTI decides to join Parliament after seven-month boycott

The session of the National Assembly and the Senate, due to begin at 11am with a motion to be moved by Defence Minister Khawaja Mohammad Asif to “discuss the security situation due to Yemen crisis”, is likely to continue for two to three days, a parliamentary source said.

The government has repeatedly said it has not yet committed sending troops to the conflict area but that it would confront any threat to Saudi Arabia’s “territorial integrity”.

But the Saudi state media have been citing Pakistan as one of more than 10 states in the coalition before and after a high-level Pakistani civil and military delegation visited the kingdom last week to assess its military requirements.

Also read: Pakistan committed to Saudi security, peaceful solution to Yemen crisis: Asif

The developments prompted fears voiced by opposition parties that the government had already agreed to join the Yemeni war in favour of Saudi Arabia and demands that the prime minister either call an all-party conference or a joint parliamentary session as a means of consulting Pakistan’s political leadership.

While the government opted for a joint session of parliament to discuss what a statement from the prime minister on Thursday called a “matter of national importance”, few could imagine the possibility of the prime minister saying no to Saudi Arabia given the special relationship between the two countries and his personal gratefulness to the Saudi royal family that played host to him when then military president Pervez Musharraf sent him into exile.

Opposition to boots on Yemeni soil

Most opposition parties have opposed the prospect of Pakistani boots being on Yemeni soil, particularly because of Pakistan’s own preoccupation in the ongoing war against terrorism and the risk of estranging neighbouring Iran, which is accused of helping the Yemeni rebels and is opposed to foreign meddling in the civil war.

But, because of the majority of the ruling PML-N and its allies and the main opposition PPP likely to adopt a flexible position, the government is likely to get a decision, probably in the form of a resolution, authorising the prime minister to decide a final course of action within a flexible framework.

Take a look: Turkey, Pakistan back peaceful resolution to Yemen conflict

Such a course could vary from an imitation of Pakistan’s dispatch of troops in the name of safeguarding the holy mosques of Makkah and Madina after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, to the Pakistan Air Force playing an advisory role or the Pakistan Navy aiding blockade of Yemeni ports.

While the PPP is most likely to go along with the government’s position despite its reservations about sending troops to the region, the PTI, whose return to parliament comes on the heels of the promulgation of a presidential ordinance empowering the government to form a judicial commission to investigate election-rigging allegations, is likely to cause some sparks in the house.

The defence minister, who led the Pakistani delegation to Saudi Arabia, is likely to first brief the house on his Saudi trip, which he said on return on Wednesday had helped him “better understand the requirements of Saudi brethren”, to be followed by speeches by parliamentary party leaders such as opposition leader Khursheed Ahmed Shah, PTI chairman Imran Khan, and Maulana Fazlur Rehman, leader of the government-allied Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam.

It will be the first time in Pakistan’s parliamentary history that a joint session and a Senate session have been called on the same day, prompting a protest from the PPP, though the joint session will begin at 11am and the upper house will begin its new session at 4pm.

“It makes no sense,” the PPP’s parliamentary leader in the Senate, Saeed Ghani, said about senators being required to attend the joint session in the morning and the Senate in the evening.

Published in Dawn, April 6th, 2015

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