- Sawing off the branch one is sitting on
The noisy PTI MNAs continuously disturbed and heckled the Leader of the Opposition when he started to speak on the budget on Monday. This led the Speaker to adjourn the proceedings till Tuesday.
There is need on the part of the government to accord due respect to Parliament which it is not doing. As things stand, the NA is being weakened by the day. A helpless Speaker cannot order the production of NA members under arrest. Issues are raised in the NA but there is rarely any headway. There was no progress over the brutal Sahiwal killings and the abduction and murder of SP Tahir Dawar. The opposition’s plea for political resolution of the complaints of tribal areas’ residents through the formation of a parliamentary committee was dismissed.
Much has already slipped out of the PM’s hands; more is going to. Decision making regarding the financial policy has been handed over to the IMF. Neither interior affairs nor foreign policy is under the PM’s control. Drawing sadistic pleasure from the incarceration of the opposition leaders Imran Khan failed to take note of the NAB chairman’s observation “if we arrest government’s allies, the PTI administration will fall in ten minutes.”
The PM seems to have written off the NA. On May 9 when he came after a gap of over two months, he stayed no more in the NA than an hour and did not utter a single word. His attendance on the presentation of the budget was his 11th presence during more than 60 sittings of the house since its inaugural session.
The PM has to realize that it is the prerogative of the opposition to criticize the government. For the NA to function normally the PM has to listen to the criticism patiently and rein in some of his less sophisticated loyalists. The Opposition is equally responsible to run the NA according to prescribed rules. The Opposition should pay attention to the PM with patience whenever he speaks, and the treasury benches should do the same when the Leader of the Opposition has the mike. Unless they do so, they are likely to find soon that they have upset the apple cart.