ISLAMABAD: A cabinet-less Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani will take an early but mandatory trust vote from the National Assembly and announce a 100-day relief programme on Saturday.

Political sources said the 342-seat lower house, meeting at 10am for a third brief session within 13 days, was sure to give the new prime minister a vote of more than two-thirds majority as it did for his election as leader of the house on Monday.

Immediately after the vote on a confidence resolution, the prime minister, as already announced by him, will unveil a programme for the first 100 days of his government, which is likely to include some reforms and immediate steps to give people some relief from the prevailing economic hardships and law and order problems.

The vote comes only four days after Mr Gilani was formally inducted into office with his oath-taking on Tuesday as the first prime minister of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) after 12 years, following two sessions of the newly elected National Assembly for its own oath-taking and the election of its speaker and deputy speaker on March 17 and 19, respectively, and for the prime minister’s election on March 24.

The Constitution makes its obligatory for a prime minister to obtain a vote of confidence from the National Assembly within 60 days of oath-taking, but most holders of the office in Pakistan’s recent parliamentary history have done it within a few days of their induction to preclude any uncertainty about the future of a coalition.

However, it will be the first time under the 1973 Constitution that a prime minister will seek a confidence vote without a cabinet. The cabinet-formation case has been held up mainly by differences between the coalition partners — the PPP and the Pakistan Muslim League-N -- over sharing some key ministries though the grouping, also including the Awami National Party and the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (Fazl), had agreed quite early to get the number of ministries in proportion to the National Assembly seats they had won in the Feb 18 election.

The situation has meant a delay in the prime minister getting full grip over the administration while the formation of the new provincial governments of President Pervez Musharraf’s opponents were awaiting word from the centre.

Of the four provincial assemblies, only the one of the NWFP could meet on Friday for its members to take oath while those of Punjab, Sindh and Balochistan were yet to hold their inaugural sessions as some opposition figures accused an isolated presidency of causing delay in the full transfer of power.

The National Assembly is likely to be prorogued after the confidence vote, while new sessions could be called soon to take up other immediate tasks such as passing resolutions to ask the government to request the UN Security Council for an inquiry into the Dec 27 assassination of PPP leader Benazir Bhutto, expressing apology to the people of Pakistan over what is called the 1979 ‘judicial murder’ of former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, and asking the government to restore about 60 superior court judges sacked under President Musharraf’s controversial Nov 3, 2007, emergency proclamation.

It will be after these resolutions that the house could take up legislative work about issues of immediate concern such as provincial autonomy and the future of the National Security Council.