President’s constitutional term completed

F.P. Report
ISLAMABAD: The five-year constitutional term of the office of President Dr Arif Alvi completed on Friday. He assumed the office of President of Pakistan on September 9, 2018. However, President Alvi will not vacate the presidency and will continue to perform his duties till the election of the new president.
After holding some important consultative meetings last week, President Alvi agreed to perform his duties until the new president assumes charge. Yesterday, former federal minister Muhammad Ali Durrani also held a long meeting with President Alvi. The president has reached Islamabad after completing his visit to Lahore. He will perform his usual official assignments today.
The extended stay at Presidency will make Arif Alvi the only head of state in the country’s history who have kept his post even after his term ends, though Chaudhry Fazal Elahi also had spent an additional month in office as a figurehead before General Ziaul Haq became president on Sept 16, 1978.
Under the law, the president is elected by members of both houses of the parliament — i.e. the Senate and the National Assembly — and the four provincial assemblies. Article 44(1) of the Constitution says that the president will hold office for a term of five years from the day he assumes charge, but he continues to hold the office until a successor is chosen. Throughout his term, Dr Arif Alvi has remained at the heart of controversies, with critics accusing him of playing with the Constitution.
PTI demands President Alvi to announce election date: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) core committee has demanded President Dr Arif Alvi to announce election date without a delay and unanimously passed a resolution during a session.
The PTI core committee members said that the country is facing constitutional, political, democratic, administrative and economic crises as the state infrastructure was shaken after the ‘unconstitutional move’ of April 2022.
The committee said that the Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) assemblies had been dissolved on January 14 and 18 respectively but the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) government did not fulfil its constitutional duty to organise polls in 90 days besides violating the Supreme Court’s April 4 order. The political party urged for concrete steps to establish a democratic government to resolve the crisis.
The PTI core committee said that Article 48 bounds the president to finalise the election date in 90 days and the president should fulfil his constitutional duty. The core committee said that the president would be responsible for violating constitutional and democratic rights if he failed to give election date.