President Zardari to address joint Parliament sitting on Thursday

ISLAMABAD: President Asif Ali Zardari will address the joint sitting of the parliament, summoned on Thursday at 04:00 pm, ARY News reported.

Under Article 56 (3) of the Constitution, the President shall address a joint session of Parliament at the commencement of the parliamentary year after general elections.

This will be President Asif Ali Zardari’s record seventh address to the joint sitting of the National Assembly and Senate. During his five-year stint in the Presidency from 2008 to 2013, he had already addressed the parliament six times.

It is pertinent to mention here that the previous joint sitting of Parliament was summoned on March 9 for the presidential elections with National Assembly Speaker Ayaz Sadiq in chair.

Asif Ali Zardari, the joint candidate of PPP and PML-N, was elected as the 14th president of Pakistan.

Zardari received majority votes of the electoral college, comprising the parliament and provincial assemblies, paving the way for him to assume the office of President of Pakistan, for the second time in the country’s parliamentary history.

The PPP co-chairman received 411 votes while the Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC) backed candidate Mehmood Khan Achakzai — the home of PTI independents — only managed to get 181 votes.

In a joint sitting of the National Assembly and Senate, the coalition government’s nominee received 255 votes while the SIC-backed candidate managed just 119 votes.