No-confidence resolution: Speaker may delay final vote for another 10 days

ISLAMABAD: If Speaker Asad Qaiser’s brazenly partisan approach against the opposition parties persisted in the no-confidence resolution against Prime Minister Imran Khan, he may consume another ten days for the final vote on the motion.

This could well be the timeline if he heeds the calls of certain official elements urging him to prorogue the session sine die. A constitutional crisis could well hit the parliamentary landscape if he paid attention to such counsel.

As per the speaker’s present attitude, the voting will be held on April 5, 28 days after the notice for the resolution was submitted to the National Assembly secretariat. The calculation has been done on the premise that the motion will be allowed to be moved on Monday (March 28), the next day of the requisitioned session.

If the speaker repeats next week what he did on Monday, the first day of the crucial session, he would not hold sittings on Saturday and Sunday (April 2 and 3) as he would decide to observe only five working days, from Monday to Friday, for proceedings on the move.

These five days and Monday and Tuesday falling on April 4 and 5 will make the seven days, the maximum time allowed under the rules for voting on the no-trust motion. Under the rules, such a resolution has to be voted upon not before three days and not later than seven days after its “moving” in the National Assembly. The speaker did not let the opposition move the resolution on Monday so that the seven-day maximum period for the voting has not resumed.

No speaker in Pakistan’s parliamentary history has as flagrantly come to the rescue of his government as Asad Qaiser has done. However, his partisanship may turn out to be an exercise in futility if the no-confidence motion is still carried. However, it is obvious that he would have hurriedly put the resolution to vote had the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) been in a position to defeat it or a confidence motion had been before the National Assembly where the ruling party possessed the requisite majority. Even after he would consume at least 28 days till April 5 after the filing of the notice of the motion on March 8, the outcome of the move may not change. He knows that he would be next to be removed if the resolution succeeds. He is not setting a healthy parliamentary tradition.

There are multiple examples when the National Assembly has worked on Saturdays and Sundays, considering the importance of the legislative or other work before it. When a constitutional process such as the disposal of the no-confidence motion is to be disposed of, the speaker’s dilatory tactics are incomprehensible and reprehensible. It appears that not only Asad Qaiser but the Imran Khan government is also waiting for a miracle to happen that will bless them with a majority in the National Assembly to frustrate the motion.

The way the speaker adjourned the sitting until Monday with a gap of Saturday and Sunday, it was clear that he had occupied the podium with a plan, devised at the behest of the government. He has never picked up the courage to defy such schemes.

He walked away from the stage in haste and refused to even listen for a moment to the hue and cry from the opposition benches. If he had made up his mind before the session not to let the opposition move the motion, why was the no-trust resolution included in the days’ agenda in black and white?

The rules say that after the receipt of the notice for such a motion coupled with a requisition request, the speaker must convene the session within 14 days. He defied the rules on the pretext that the halls of the National Assembly and Senate were under renovation and no other place in the federal capital was available for the process. Consequently, he summoned the session after 17 days, which was a violation of the Constitution. To justify the delay, he relied on a constitutional article that says that if a certain thing or act is not done within a time specified in the Constitution, it will not become invalid or ineffective for the mere fact that it was not done within that timeline.

Now, he is further delaying the vote by observing the weekly holidays of Saturdays and Sundays and on the pretext that a session has to be adjourned as per the parliamentary practice after offering prayers for the departed souls.

The no-trust motion that was to be dealt with within a maximum of three weeks as per the Constitution, has dragged on too long with official business at a standstill as the prime minister is busy fighting for survival. No cabinet meeting, which used to be held every week, has been arranged for a month now. Besides, the political instability continues to play havoc in every field as Pakistan is in a state of suspended animation.