Provincial assemblies’ report card
Pildat (Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency) has given the Sindh Assembly a reason to be happy. It turns out that Sindh has been the most serious of all assemblies in the third year of the present electoral cycle, contrary to popular perception. Pildat focuses on political and public policy research and strengthening of legislation. It also provides important and impressive analytics breakdown, which is invaluable in gauging performance against specific factors. It says something, for example, that the Punjab chief minister attended only five percent of total sittings this year, the lowest of all four CMs.
The basic business of the assembly is legislation; and that is where Sindh has scored most impressively. Its performance with regard to legislation is a whopping 70 percent. Also, its members introduced the highest number of private members bills at nine, followed by one bill each by Punjab and KP assemblies, and none by Balochistan assembly. These bills are an extremely important indicator; they reflect the use of the provision to make laws in addition to laws made by the executive. Also very importantly, the Sindh assembly outperformed others in the crucial category of representation by scoring a good 88 percent.
In terms of attendance, once again Sindh was at top, along with Balochistan, at 34 percent, while the worst scorer was, predictably, Punjab with an average of 13 percent. The analysis also noted other important points like Balochistan still being unable to elect all chairpersons for standing committees – three years into the cycle – and that KP’s is the only legislature conducting all business of the house through computers. Among other things, the report ought to be a wakeup call for the Punjab government. Just as in the centre, the PML-N camp in Punjab has not given the Assembly much importance. Perhaps analyses like these will present a sobering reminder that numbers do perhaps the loudest talking, especially when the next election is a little under two years away.
