New National Assembly inauguration on Thursday. Prime Minister, Speaker ,Deputy Speaker & Leader of the opposition will be elected.
In Pakistan new parlimanetary session will start from tomorrow. In accordance with the constitutional mandate, President Arif Alvi was required to convene a fresh session of the National Assembly within 21 days of the general elections held on February 8, setting the deadline for February 29. However, with President Alvi’s hesitance, National Assembly Speaker Raja Pervaiz Ashraf took the initiative and summoned the session on the deadline day.
The proceeding of first session of newly elected assembly will be as follows.
- Oath of lawmakers :
The first order of business in this inaugural session will be the administration of the oath to all lawmakers. Among the 336-member assembly, 60 seats are reserved for women and 10 for minorities. The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has already allocated 40 reserved seats for women to various political parties, including allocations for different provinces. Additionally, seven out of the 10 seats reserved for minorities have been assigned. The allocation of reserved seats for minorities and women to the Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC), which has formed an alliance with the PTI, is pending.
- Election of new speaker :
The session will proceed with the elections for Speaker and Deputy Speaker, presided over by Raja Parviaz Ashraf until a successor is elected. The procedure for the Speaker’s election, as outlined in the Rules of Business and Conduct of Business in the National Assembly 2007, entails the nomination of candidates followed by a secret ballot. The voting process will be conducted through a secret ballot, and whoever receives more votes will be elected the new speaker of the house. In case the speaker’s election ends in a tie, the election will be held again.
- Election of new Deputy Speaker :
Subsequently, the new speaker will announce the schedule for the deputy speaker’s election. In the same manner, through a secret ballot, the deputy will be elected.
- Prime Minster Election:
The process for electing the Prime Minister, referred to as the Leader of the House, will commence with the announcement of the election schedule by the new Speaker. The nomination papers will be submitted, and voting, restricted to Muslim members, will be conducted by division under the Speaker’s supervision.
Under the supervision of the speaker, an open vote will take place — by division.
For example, if there are two candidates, the speaker would say that ‘whoever wants to vote for candidate A can go to lobby A’ and ‘whoever wants to vote for candidate B, can go to lobby B’. If there are three candidates then there can be a lobby C as well,
At the entrance of the said lobbies, there will be an member of the assembly secretariat staff who will record every MNAs name in their register. This whole process will be open and people sitting in the galleries will be able to see who votes for whom.
Here, the political parties have to vote collectively and every member has to vote for the candidate that their party is voting for.
If a member of a parliamentary party votes against the directives of their party, not only will their vote not be counted, but they will also be penalized and de-seated from the assembly
After every member has picked their lobby and registered their vote, the speaker will call them back and announce the result. To be selected as the prime minister, one needs a simple majority — more than half of the votes in the house i.e. 169 votes out of the total 336.
But since there is no limit for the number of candidates hoping to grab the PM’s position, one possibility could be that there are three or more candidates contesting and none of them gets 169 or more votes.
- Leader of the opposition
Following the Prime Minister’s election, the Speaker will call for submissions from opposition members for the Leader of the Opposition, who will be declared based on numerical strength after verification of signatures. This announcement will occur promptly after the Prime Minister’s election, though the submission process may require some time.
