According to sources, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani had telephoned Nawaz Sharif and talked about the joint session of the Parliament to be held on Monday but Nawaz expressed inability to attend it due to government's delaying tactics in clipping presidential powers in the past.
PML-N spokesman Senator Pervez Rashid confirmed that Nawaz Sharif would not attend the joint sitting of the Parliament, terming President Zardari's address as a routine matter.
"It is not necessary to attend the joint sitting, as it is an obligation that the President has to address the joint sitting every year, and why Nawaz Sharif is not going to attend the joint sitting which he did last is not a question. Our MNAs will be there and that's enough," he added. When told that the President would announce repeal of the Legal Framework Order and the Seventeenth Amendment, for which the PML-N had been pressing the government for long, he said that it would make no difference as these things should have been done two years ago.