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| October 23, 2005 | Sunday | Ramzan 18, 1426 |
Three-day a week NA session unjustified
ISLAMABAD, Oct 22: People’s Party Parliamentarians (PPP) MNA from Lahore Ch Aitzaz Ahsan has sent a letter to the National Assembly Speaker Ch Amir Hussain lodging protest over the “manners in which sittings of the House are being convened and adjourned.”
The PPP MNA has been protesting over the government’s decision to convene the National Assembly sessions only three days a week. During the last two sittings, the PPP MNA also made a speech over the issue and termed it unjustified for the members to work for three days and get salary and allowances for the whole week.
In his letter, a copy of which was made available to Dawn, the PPP MNA says that the “professed reason for adopting this practice” is that the government seeks to meet a constitutional requirement under Article 54(2) which says “the National Assembly shall meet for not less than 130 working days in each year.”
Mr Ahsan says that there is no doubt that the explanation of this clause does include “any period, not exceeding two days for the National Assembly is adjourned” in the definition of working days. “But it is a grievous abuse of this explanation as we are proceeding regularly to adjourn for two days, doing no work and yet counting the non-working days to make the total of 130,” he said, adding: “By this contrivance, the Assembly works three days a week and counts seven. All emoluments are paid and received for all seven days. This has become a practice in recent sessions.”
Mr Ahsan further says, “If not a fraud on the constitution, this certainly is an abuse of the explanation to Clause (2) of Article 54.”
The PPP leader claims that the government is relying on this mechanism as it has no agenda for the parliament business. “It (the government), moreover, considers Parliament an irksome redundancy. All decisions, (including those by which the prime ministers have been selected) are taken outside the House. The House is seemingly irrelevant to those who actually take those decisions,” he adds.
Mr Ahsan has asked the speaker to take up the agenda items submitted by the opposition members, if the government has no business to carry in the National Assembly. “Midweek breaks are neither justified nor constitutional,” he says. He warns that “it would be a serious enough charge against the House that while it actually transacted business on three days in a week, its honourable members obtained full emoluments for all seven.”
“This is, therefore, to request you to rule or put before the House that if resort is made more than once in any week to the explanation in Clause 2 of Article 54, the additional days shall not be so counted when totalling the prescribed 130 days. Even if the adjournment is seemingly justified by some higher national cause such as earthquake relief efforts, there is no justification for counting those days as working days of the National Assembly or receiving any emoluments for such non- working days,” suggests the MNA.
“If this is not possible for you (the speaker), then I must and hereby do renounce henceforth the benefits due to me by this counting of the days of such adjournments.
I also authorize you to retain all such payments due to me for all midweek adjournments and to contribute them to the National Assembly’s Earthquake Relief Fund,” Mr Ahsan concludes in his letter.
PPP relief efforts: The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) has said on the instruction of party chairperson Benazir Bhutto, relief goods are being distributed among the earthquake-affected people in Azad Kashmir and the NWFP.
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