ISLAMABAD, Sept 30: The government has decided to make “appropriate changes” to the oaths of office for the prime minister and parliament members, as envisaged in the 1973 Constitution, to give an additional cover to the constitutional amendments made over the past three years.

All parliament members will have to take the oath that they will abide by and protect the Legal Framework Order which President Pervez Musharraf had issued on Aug 21 to introduce a series of constitutional amendments, a source in the National Reconstruction Bureau told Dawn.

Almost all political parties have rejected the amendments made through the LFO, saying the Constitution can be amended only by a two-thirds majority of parliamentarians.

Officials at the NRB, who had drafted the LFO, said they believed that by making “appropriate alteration” in the oath for the prime minister and National Assembly members they could avoid the legal compulsion of taking the LFO to parliament for ratification.

President Musharraf had told a press conference on Aug 21, where he had issued the LFO, that the amendments decreed by him were irreversible and the government would not take them to parliament for validation.

To the text of oath for parliament members “...I will preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan” will be added the words “and Legal Framework Order,” the NRB source said.

The source said that a similar amendment would be made to the oath for the prime minister so that the LFO, which also contains the provisions for the formation of the National Security Council, could not be reversed or altered by parliament.

NRB chief Lt-Gen Tanveer Hussain Naqvi would neither deny nor confirm the proposed changes in the oaths. All he said was that such matters were dealt with by the law ministry and not the NRB.

Law Secretary Justice Mansoor Ahmed said that under the existing legal dispensation parliament members as well as the prime minister would have to take the oath under the PCO.

The oath to the National Assembly to be elected on Oct 10 will be administered by Chief Election Commissioner Justice Irshad Hassan Khan because the sitting Speaker was also dismissed when President Musharraf had dissolved parliament on Oct 12, 1999.

A source at the National Assembly secretariat said the first sitting of the house for oath taking would be held in the last week of October, most probably on Oct 28.

On previous occasions in recent years, the first sitting of the National Assembly was held within 10 to 15 days after the elections. After the last elections on Feb 3, 1997, which gave a massive mandate to the PML (N), the National Assembly had held its first sitting on Feb 15.