ISLAMABAD
The level of seriousness on the part of treasury and opposition members could be gauged by the fact that lowest presence was observed by the lawmakers in past six sittings of the House.
Non-seriousness prevailed during the ninth session of the National Assembly on Monday as well as the opposition leader and interior minister remained busy in making personal remarks against each other rather than discussing agenda or other issues, including CEC appointment, Taliban talks or the $1.5 billion mysterious financial assistance from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan.
The debate on a privilege motion about offloading of Awami Muslim League leader Sheikh Rasheed Ahmed from a PIA flight a few days back turned into bad mouthing between lawmakers when Khurshid Shah raised the issue by calling upon the government to take the issue seriously.
Pakistan Today had earlier reported that tensions between Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar and Opposition Leader Khurshid Shah were mounting as the PPP felt being ignored in wake of importance given to PTI Chairman Imran Khan.
Shah demanded the government summon the US ambassador and lodge protest for stopping the AML leader from travelling to Canada on the pretext of a security alert.
The interior minister said that the agreement under which Ahmed was barred from going to Canada was signed by the previous PPP government. He also said that it was the former government when the US forces attacked the country to hunt down Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad.
He said that the government has no objection to the privilege motion but the way the issue was raised was inappropriate.
The PPP lawmakers rose on their seats and started shouting and kept on interrupting Nisar.
Immediately after Nisar, Shah again took the floor and deplored that he did not mean to criticise the government on this issue and in a harsh tone threatened the environment of the House if the minister wanted the same.
Shah said that he was not afraid of threats because if his party could face the generals during dictatorship what was the value of threats by someone else.
In an apparent reference to Nisar, Shah said that he did not write an apology to Gen Musharraf to save his skin.
Nisar again responded to Shah and recalled the NRO signing with Musharraf and said that he knew the credibility and integrity of those who were making hue and cry over the issue.
This again prompted the opposition leader to rise in his seat and say that the NRO paved the way for all exiled politicians to come back in the country otherwise those attempted earlier were bundled out of the country, a reference to Nawaz Sharif’s attempt to come back in September 2007 before he finally made his homecoming in November 2007.
He disclosed that even such elements did not want to undo the restriction for a third-time premiership, put in place by Musharraf after toppling the PML-N government in 1999.
However, sanity prevailed in the House finally when Railway Minister Saad Rafiq paid tribute to Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and clarified that words of Nisar were misconstrued about Bhutto by PPP members.
Mahmood Khan Achakzai advised both Nisar and Shah to behave like “good boys” and shake hands to remove the animosity.
Later, the House accepted the privilege motion and referred it to the committee on privileges, though Sheikh Rasheed wanted it to be taken up by the special privilege committee.
LOW QUORUM:
As per data released by FAFEN on attendance of the lawmakers of nine sessions of the 14th National Assembly, six reflected a lack of interest on part of the parliamentarians in the legislative business.
A comparative analysis of the observation data regarding the attendance of legislators show that the National Assembly held 78 sittings in nine sessions from June 1, 2013 to March 7. Though the members’ attendance was relatively higher in the earlier sessions; however, it continued to drop in the latter sessions. The lack of quorum was pointed out on 13 occasions in six sessions while the leader of the House attended at least one sitting in five sessions – first, second, third, eighth and ninth – with the exception of second session when he was present in two sittings.
