President to address Parliament on March 21

Zardari may face more hostile audience amid growing tensions between the government and opposition political parties.

ISLAMABAD:

President Asif Zardari will deliver his annual address to Parliament later this month, amid growing tensions between the government and opposition political parties.

Federal Law Minister Babar Awan said that the government had set March 21 for the address that the president is constitutionally bound to deliver at the beginning of every parliamentary year. A one-day special joint session of both houses of Parliament — the National Assembly and the Senate — has been called for the occasion.

This will be President Zardari’s fourth and perhaps the toughest address to Parliament, considering the increase in hostility on the national political scene since he last addressed the legislature on April 5, 2010.

The most formidable of challenges facing the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) administration today is dealing with an increasingly independent judiciary that has been ‘very active’ in past couple of years.

Another challenge emanates from the resistance the government has recently been facing in implementing key economic decisions due to opposition not only by the opposition but also its coalition allies.

Political analysts believe that President Zardari would have come up with answers to the ‘toughest of questions’ confronting his party’s administration when he speaks before lawmakers, most of whom might not be ready to listen to him and may resort to noisy protests.

Fierce protest during presidential addresses to Parliament was one of the most consistent traditions of Pakistan’s politics in 1990s.

It was fears of a backlash from parliamentarians that kept former President Pervez Musharraf away from addressing them regularly, despite the fact that it violated a constitutional provision. Musharraf was able to address Parliament only once in his almost nine years rule.

For President Zardari, however, the first three addresses were very smooth as he hardly faced any protest at all, in keeping with the national political mood of the time which seemed desperate to avoid a repeat of the nasty political battles of the 1990s that ultimately led to a military coup in October 1999.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 12^th, 2011.