Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: The caretaker Prime Minister has moved a summary to the office of the President seeking the inaugural session of the National Assembly on August 13, coming Monday.

Separately, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa governor Iqbal Zafar Jhagra has also summoned the first session of the newly-elected provincial assembly on August 13.

Speaking to the media on Thursday, Information Minister Syed Ali Zafar said that all legal formalities for the NA session had been completed with the notification of successful candidates by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP). He said that under the Constitution, it was obligatory to summon the first session of the Assembly within 21 days after elections, or by August 15.

Barrister Zafar said in the first session of the Assembly, all the newly-elected members would take oath of office before the election of the speaker, the deputy speaker and the prime minister. The process would take three to four days, he said, adding that time would taken in submission and scrutiny of nomination papers.

“As soon as the newly-elected prime minister takes oath, the job of the caretakers will be over and power will be transferred to the newly elected government under the law and the Constitution,” he said.

Barrister Zafar said that caretaker PM Nasir-ul-Mulk had wanted to have the incoming PM attend the upcoming August 14 celebrations, along with the president but the electoral process took time to complete, preventing the transfer of power to the new government before Independence Day.

Replying to a question about rigging allegations, he said statements on the issue of fairness of elections were mostly politically motivated. He said the ECP had asked the caretaker government for holding inquiry into the failure of RTS and the government was looking into it.

He said election had been held and it was time now to look forward. “One should wait for the result of the inquiry to be conducted on the failure of the RTS before commenting on it,” he said, adding that recounting was allowed under election laws and there was no harm in recounting votes if it was in accordance with the law.

About the ongoing spell of power outages across the country, he said long term planning was required to overcome the problem and some difficult decisions would have to be made in this connection.

Published in Daily Times, August 10^th 2018.