ISLAMABAD, April 17: Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) President Makhdoom Javed Hashmi said on Thursday that deposed president Mohammad Rafiq Tarar was still the country’s legal president under article 44 of the Constitution.
He told a news conference that parliament was incomplete because President Pervez Musharraf had not been elected by a parliamentary electoral college provided by the Constitution soon after the completion of Senate.
Gen Musharraf, chief executive at the time, had assumed the president’s office in June 2001 after removing Mr Tarar from his office.
Mr Hashmi said 189 days had passed after the Oct 10 elections but the parliamentary calender year was still to begin with a mandatory address by president to a joint session of parliament.
Responding to a query about the constitutional crisis, he said accepting the disputed Legal Framework Order (LFO) would mean giving a dagger in the hands of a murderer.
He said opposition to the LFO was meant to restore supremacy of parliament, and that the combined opposition, along with many PML-Q members, would continue its struggle against the controversial document.
He said a large number of PML-Q members of parliament had realized that the LFO was an illegal piece of legislation and were ready to join hands with the combined opposition in the struggle against it.
Without a proper start of the parliamentary calender year, the PML-N leader said, all the previous five National Assembly sessions held after the October 10 elections were unlawful.
He said General Musharraf had forfeited the right to call himself president by failing to address a joint sitting of parliament, which should start the parliamentary year under article 56(3) of the Constitution.
Mr Hashmi said Gen Musharraf’s presidency was dubious on another count: he had taken oath under the 1973 Constitution but the judge who administered oath to him had not taken a fresh oath under the same Constitution and was still working under the Provisional Constitution Order issued after the 1999 coup.
Mr Hashmi warned against any “adventurism” of dissolving the elected assemblies, saying that none of the presidents who dissolved assemblies in the past could complete his tenure.