ISLAMABAD: President Mamnoon Hussain will take the podium for a second time on Thursday to open the third year of the current parliament, even as a boastful opposition leader predicted that the year may be interrupted about halfway through by fresh elections.

But it appears the new parliamentary year, beginning with a constitutionally mandated presidential address to a joint sitting of the National Assembly and Senate, will be much quieter than the previous one, which was marked by an unprecedented siege of Parliament House.

Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan sounded the drums of war when the president opened this parliament’s second year on June 2, 2014.

At one point, a question mark hung over the fate of parliament and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s government when the PTI and its non-parliamentary ally, the Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT), brought thousands of supporters to Islamabad from Lahore to lay siege to parliament to protest alleged rigging in the 2013 general elections.

But no such danger, which forced nearly all other opposition parties to join forces with the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), seems to be on the horizon this time around.

While the root cause of the 2014 protest is still being investigated by an inquiry commission consisting of Supreme Court judges and the PTI has long since ended its parliamentary boycott of over seven months, Imran Khan has been repeatedly predicting that 2015 would be an election year.

With hardly any other political party – or astrologer – coming out in support of his view publicly, and after months of relative comfort for the PML-N following the end of the 126-day sit-in outside parliament, the government appears dismissive of the PTI leader’s boasts as it begins its third year in office.

President Mamnoon Hussain was not elected to office when the PML-N government faced an unusual situation with an opposition president, Asif Ali Zardari, speaking on its behalf when he the opened the PML-N government’s first parliamentary year with a record sixth address to a joint sitting on June 10, 2013.

That kept President Hussain, who was sworn in on Sept 9, 2013, waiting for about 10 months before he got the chance to do the honours himself.

This joint sitting, where the president is to speak about the achievements of his party’s government over the past two years and its plans for the next year, comes just a day before the National Assembly is to begin its budget session.

Published in Dawn, June 4th, 2015

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