ON two consecutive days in the unbearable heat of June, there have taken place two disturbing occasions that probably had a bewildering and depressing impact on Karachiites in particular and the people of Sindh in general. The country has its own problems, but perhaps these have been discussed with concern in other provinces as well.

On the longest day of the year, also the hottest of summer so far, it was reported that the Sindh Assembly session had ended in a ‘punch-up’. This was on June 21. And it was reported by this daily that “several enraged opposition members in the Sindh Assembly on Wednesday beat up a treasury member for his act of sending an indecent message on a slip to a woman member. This appeared to be an unprecedented incident of its kind in the history of the assembly.” There was also published a four-column photograph with a heading ‘MPAs fight’ and the caption read “Opposition and government members fight during the Sindh Assembly session on Wednesday”.

The very next day, another particularly warm day it was reported that there was "rumpus at the City Council session". This happened on June 22. Once again there was a four-column photograph showing opposition members standing up in protest as City Nazim presented the budget in City Council.

How have citizens reacted to these news reports about their elected representatives? Is this the way to solve the problems of the people, is what many average Karachiites have wondered. But one of them reminds very cynically that similar reports also come from other assemblies in the country, including the National Assembly.

What is the message that comes through from the sort of incident that took place in the Sindh Assembly? It is reported that Ishwar Lal, a minority member of the ruling PML, sent a message through a peon to PPP MPA Shazia Marri while the general debate of the budget was on. She, later, received another message, sent by a Muttahida MPA Poonjomal Bheel, through PPP MPA Shamim Ara Panhwar. Ms Shazia Marri handed over both the slips to the leader of the opposition Nisar Ahmed Khuhro who passed them top some other PPP MPAs.

The details of what then happened are well known and television channels also ran detailed reports, including footage of the ‘fight’. The slip sent to MPA Shazia Marri read Aap Keisi Hein (How are you?) and when PML MPA Ishwar Lal was being pushed, slapped and punched, there were women MPAs from the opposition benches who were seen encouraging their colleagues and saying: “Teach him a lesson”.

I got this very blunt comment from a colleague who asked me "What are we teaching the young with such incidents... and mind you, this is a graduate assembly." And a working woman asked in disgust whether working women really got the respect and dignity they deserve. She was referring to the television channels which reported what Shazia Marri had been reportedly saying that she had been getting messages from the MPA in question.

As a result of this entire rumpus in the provincial assembly five MPAs were suspended by Sindh Assembly Speaker Syed Muzzaffar Hussain Shah. MPA Ishwar Lal was suspended for the rest of the budget session and four PPP MPAs were suspended for two days. These MPAs were Syed Murad Ali Shah, Haji Munawar Ali Abbasi, Saleem Hingoro and Nawaz Ali Chandio.

Sindh Chief Minister Dr Arbab Ghulam Rahim described the incident as the worst ever in the history of the assembly and said that MPA Ishwar Lal had committed a wrong act which was regrettable to his party, but the way the opposition reacted to his act was condemnable.

Similarly, the other forum of elected people also witnessed rumpus. It began as soon as City Nazim Syed Mustafa Kamal began presenting the 2006-07 budget of the city district government. Opposition councillors, led by Awam Dost councillors Saeed Ghani and Sheikh Mahbub and Al Khidmat’s Rafique Ahmed ‘unfurled placards in the house and tore copies of the budget document and kept on shouting slogans’.

What did the slogans focus on? The themes were water, electricity and improvement of the sewerage system. Chaos and confusion resulted, but the nazim continued for about 30 minutes despite the loud protests. To imagine all this happening, is to be worried.

All these are educated, influential people, and all these people have been elected by the citizens to solve their day to day problems.

About the way in which this society is showing impatience and indiscipline, a senior Karachiite recalled that this was not the first time where has been this kind of ‘chaos and confusion’ in the city council and neither was the ‘rumpus’ in the provincial assembly without precedence. He said: “We expect our leaders to show us the way to conduct ourselves. These are, in a way, the signs of the times that we are in.” For a change, we did not talk of horse trading in the country!

We talked about the multitude of problems and challenges that the people of Karachi face. The unity and harmony is what really needed to create an enabling environment to tackle the issues that have been pending for long.

At the City Council budget session, a tax free budget of Rs44.21billion was presented by the nazim and it was described as a ‘development and welfare oriented budget’. And one of the budget’s highlights is that there is going to be community policing at town level. There are many other details of the budget which shows how much money is going to be spent on Karachi in the next financial year. In the ultimate analysis, one would like to believe that Karachi will stand to gain from it.

But the opposition members of the city council said that the budget was a ‘bundle of lies’, saying that attempts have been made to hoodwink people by a jugglery of words. They further said that most of the development projects were approved by the previous city government, but the present city government was trying to take its credit. Is this not the general tone and text of speeches they sometimes make in the National Assembly? Isn’t it amazing (rather disappointing) to see the extent to which we are polarized and divided?

But let us end with the announcement that the nazim made about raising the salaries of kundimen from Rs5,000 to Rs10,000. This is truly welcome. These are the men who are required to keep the city’s sewerage lines clean. They sometimes lose their lives in the process. This year, Rs5 million have been allocated for those who die while seeking to keep sewerage lines clean and operational. We trust that their efficiency will be visible.