Challenges ranging from a burgeoning energy crisis to an economic meltdown to threats of Islamic militancy hung heavy as Pakistan’s new parliament prepared to meet for its inaugural session Saturday.
The session comes three weeks after May 11 polls in which the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party of former two-time Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif took the most votes, with 183 members in the 342-seat house. Sharif is expected to be named prime minister again in a decision scheduled for Wednesday.
The former ruling Pakistan People’s Party is positioned second, with 39 seats.
The highlight of Saturday’s session was Sharif’s return to the parliament building, 14 years after he was removed by former military ruler, Pervez Musharraf, in a bloodless coup in 1999. Sharif was exiled to Saudi Arabia in 2000 and returned in 2007, but did not contest for parliament.
Ahead of the meeting, Sharif congratulated the people of Pakistan for the country’s peaceful political transition, the first ever in Pakistan’s 65-year history.
“I am very happy that I and my party have played a role in the peaceful transition,” he told reporters after flying in from the eastern city of Lahore to Islamabad. “I hope that in future, also, governments will be changed through votes of the people. I think it is the most civilized way of changing governments.” The meeting could not start as scheduled at 10 am (0500 GMT), as various parties were busy holding meetings among their lawmakers before the formal session.
In the first session, newly elected members of the national assembly, the lower house of parliament, will take their oaths.
The new government faces several challenges, including power shortages, an economic crisis, spreading militancy by Taliban rebels and continuing US drone attack in the lawless tribal region in the north-west.
The strikes are opposed by the PML-N and many other parties which have taken seats in the new parliament.
In the first such post-election strike, on Wednesday, at least six militants, including the deputy chief of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), an umbrella organization of several militant groups, were killed.
Security was beefed up ahead of the meeting and army soldiers and police were deployed around the capital.