How to remove President of Pakistan?
Islamabad: After the ouster of prime minister Imran Khan through a no-confidence motion, Pakistanis are wondering whether President Arif Alvi could also be ousted from his office.
Below is a Twitter thread by OSINT Insider, an Open source intelligence, which explain the procedure to remove the president through impeachment.
“Can President Alvi be impeached? here is a thread about the procedure to remove President of Pakistan. Hint: Unlike Prime Minister, removal or impeachment of president of Pakistan is a much difficult task. Here is how: In order to start process of impeachment, a notice of impeachment needs to be sent to either Speaker national assembly or Chairman Senate. This notice must be signed by one half of the total membership of the relative house i.e 171 members of NA or 50 member of the Senate. If members of Senate have sent the notice to Chairman, he will forward the notice to Speaker NA. When speaker receives the notice, he will inform the president about the notice about his impeachment. This should be done within three days of receipt of the notice to the speaker.
Now speaker shall call a joint-session of the parliament to start proceedings to impeach the President. The session shall be called not earlier than seven days and not later than fourteen days after the receipt of the notice by the President.
In the joint sitting of the parliament, movers of the resolution shall provide the reasons to remove the President. President will also be able to appear before the joint session & defend himself.
Once the debate is over, a voting will be conducted on the resolution to remove the President. Resolution needs to be passed by no less than two-third majority of total membership of the parliament.
Resolution to impeach the President needs to be passed by no less than 296/442 members of the parliament. In other words, PDM alliance needs 296 members out of 442 (342 NA + 100 senate) members to impeach President Alvi. So what are the numbers?
In National Assembly, PDM alliance has 174 votes. Just for the sake of it, even if we include PTI rebels, that number goes up to 196. So they need 100 / 100 senate members to vote against President Alvi to remove him.
In Senate, PTI has has 27 seats. PMLQ & GDA have one seat each respectively. There are two independents as well. Non-PDM parties like JI have senate seats as well. In other words, impeachment of President Alvi is impossible. So govt will have to live with him and his “delays “