The Sindh Assembly literally turned into a fish market on Tuesday when female lawmakers from the coalition parties in Sindh engaged in a heated war of words.
The full-throated verbal clash took place between Information Minister Shazia Marri of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and Marvi Rashdi of the Pakistan Muslim League-Functional (PML-F), who hurled remarks at each other that, by all means, were derogatory and non-parliamentary.
The face-off attracted the ire of Speaker Nisar Khuhro who reprimanded the party fellow, Marri, and expunged certain words used by the provincial information minister at the top of her voice. Ignited by a difference of opinion on a resolution between the two lawmakers, the argument ended up in a situation where Marri blasted Marvi for lacking the brain to even correctly word her draft and the latter counter-accusing the information minister of trying to impress the house by wearing “over make-up”.
Marvi, on the private members’ day, wanted to table a resolution, termed as “sensitive” by the members for its call for the inclusion of a column for the name of an adoptive parents in the identity documents of a child. “You should be ashamed of yourself, look at your resolution, look at the language in it,” shouted Marri holding a copy of Marvi’s resolution.
“This August House resolves and recommends to the Government of Sindh to approach the Federal Government for inclusion of a Column for the name of an Adoptive Parents in the Identity Documents of a Child,” reads the disputed draft, the language of which Marri dubbed as “grammatically erroneous”.
“She (Marri) thinks by wearing over make-up she would impress the house,” replied the PML-F lawmaker who, in a post-session media talk, accused the information minister of doing “face spending”, a cost-intensive practice that, Marvi claimed, could only be afforded by the ministers who have “other” sources of income too.
“We women do make up but she does face spending,” she said.
When contacted Marri said the PML-F legislator was “bound to find some way of publicity” and that Tuesday’s happening was “a failed attempt of harassment” on her part.
The speaker warned the fighting lawmakers against issuing “personal remarks” and ordered to expunge the same.