Interim prime minister: Where there is no consensus, what will the opposition do?

ISLAMABAD:

Appointing a caretaker prime minister and chief ministers is not as simple as it seems.

If the leader of the opposition and the leader of the house in the national and provincial assemblies do not reach consensus over a particular name, there can be constitutional stalemate.

Moreover, in case of disagreement, many political and legal hitches can prop up if the matter goes to a parliamentary committee, constituted by the speaker as per constitutional provisions inserted under the 20th amendment.

The government and opposition have declared their nominees for the interim PM. Leading party in the opposition, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz on Friday further narrowed down its list by excluding Justice (retd) Shakirullah Jan. The party will now be betting on Justice (retd) Nasir Aslam Zahid and Rasool Bux Palijo.

Except for former State Bank governor Ishrat Husain, PML-N has rejected the names of Hafeez Sheikh and Justice (retd) Hazar Khan Khosa, the nominees put forward by Prime Minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf.

As the race goes on, Zahid and Husain appear to be the potentially agreeable candidates. However, these names are not final and changes can still be made in the next four days if both sides feel the need. In case a consensus is not reached, a parliamentary committee is constituted.

In this regard, Article 224A-1 of the Constitution states that if the premier and opposition leader do not agree on the caretaker prime minister within three days of the dissolution of the National Assembly, they will forward nominees to a committee which has to be immediately constituted by the speaker of the national assembly. The committee will comprise “eight members of the outgoing national assembly, or the senate, or both, having equal representation from the treasury and the opposition, to be nominated by the prime minister and the leader of the opposition respectively.”

A similar procedure has to be followed in provinces.

In this clause, the word ‘immediately’ is most problematic. No clear interpretation of the term is found anywhere in the Constitution. In essence, a reasonable time period that defines ‘immediately’ has not been specified in the constitution.

Now what?

Constitutionally, it is the discretion of the leader of the house and the leader of the opposition to propose four names each to the speaker, irrespective of whom they nominate. Democratic traditions, however, require that these nominees should be broadly representative of all treasury and opposition groups.

Besides PML-N, which holds the office of leader of opposition, there are other groups including MQM – which recently parted ways with the ruling coalition at the centre and in Sindh it holds the seat of leader of opposition in the provincial legislature – Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s JUI-F and Pir Pagara’s PML-F in the opposition.

Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan has been publicly saying that he does not consider MQM an opposition. However, it would be difficult for him to ignore JUI-F whose chief has close relations with President Asif Ali Zardari despite pulling out of the ruling coalition more than two years back. Fazl is also close with Nawaz and the two have been talking about seat adjustments for the upcoming elections.

Since the committee is evenly divided it will be a matter of one vote on either side to get a nominee selected as the new caretaker premier. Once the committee is constituted, every member would be free to go for any nominee among the four names forwarded to the panel by the leader of the house and opposition.

Given Fazl’s past, Nisar will have to be very calculated when nominating as one vote can change the entire game.

In case this committee remains divided on the nominees and fails to reach a conclusion within three days of the referral of the matter to it, the issue will go to the ECP, where the chief election commissioner and four members – from each province –will select any one of the four nominees though a majority vote count within two days.

Since this commission has a total five persons to make a decision, there will be no chances of a tie unless any of its members are missing from the proceedings.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 16^th, 2013.