Constitutionally speaking, for good three hours on January 19, 2004 Pakistan had no president. That day President General Pervez Musharraf had left at 7.30 pm on a foreign tour. Under the law at the same very moment chairman of the Senate Muhammamian Soomro should have been declared as acting president.
At that time Soomro was presiding over the Senate and kept himself engaged in that exercise till about 10.30 pm when the Senate secretariat was informed of the president's departure. That virtually amounted to a constitutional breakdown.
AS soon as the question hour was over rising on point of order this (Wednesday) evening the Opposition leader Raza Rabbani asserted that said all the proceedings transacted by the upper house under the chairmanship of Soomro after President Musharraf's plane had taken off were illegal.
Muhammadmian was Acting President as soon as the president left and "a president is not allowed to preside over the Senate".
To this Professor Khurshid Ahmad added, "that means during this time the country had no president".
The presiding officer, Khalilur Rehman sought guidance from the leader of the house Wasim Sajjad on the issue.
"You have put me in a difficult position" said Wasim Sajjad who is supposed to be quite familiar with this practice, as he became Acting President on a number of times by virtue of his position as Chairman of the Senate in the past. "I think the Chairman's secretariat was not informed in time. But to suggest that the entire proceedings that evening were illegal is going too far".
That upset the presiding officer: "If the secretariat had the information of President Musharraf's departure and it did not inform the Chairman then I would say it was a mala fide act". But he thought it would be proper that the matter as to when the information about the president's departure was receive be left to Soomro. "Better, we leave the matter pending".
The opposition was not prepared for this. Safder Abbasi sonorously declared it was "total breakdown of the constitutional machinery... For two and a half-hour nobody knew who was the president of Pakistan".
Khalid Ranjha, a ministerial hopeful, volunteered to bail out the government. Saying the proceedings, which may, at worst , have been irregular but not illegal, should be "ratified" by a special resolution he offered to move for that. But the opposition did not agree and the matter was held pending.
The proceedings in the Senate started on a dull note, matching the tintinnabulation of rain that soaked the Capital.
With President gone abroad and the Prime Minister away to Balochistan the ministers were in small supply.
Questions enlisted for the day mostly concerned Humayun Akhter Khan who has gone with the president.
Privatisation Minister Dr Hafeez Sheikh had agreed to stand in for the commerce minister. But for some questions by the veteran parliamentarian, Anwer Bhinder, "the omniscient" Sheikh could have succeeded. But he did not, because Bhinder was not prepared to hear generalisations when he asked specific questions and wanted specific answers.
However, towards the fag end of the question hour the proceedings caught some heat. Answers to the two questions asked by Sanaullah Baloch showed that Balochistan-domiciled officers were not getting postings abroad in commercial sections of Pakistan missions.
In a rare show of solidarity Balochistan senators from both sides of the aisle joined hands in condemning the commerce ministry for ignoring the officers of their province.
Even the recruitment system is loaded against their people because people from other provinces steal their share by securing domicile certificates of Balochistan illegally. But Bhinder was not convinced. "Punjab too should get its quota of jobs on the basis of population".
This was most probably the penultimate sitting of the ninth session of the Senate. At its next sitting on Friday the house is expected to be prorogued.
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