ISLAMABAD, Feb 23: The National Assembly ended one of its most disorderly sessions on Friday after passing new rules, which dissenters said were aimed to browbeat the opposition, on a day that saw the ruling party joining religious parties in a veiled religious decree against anti-militant attacks in tribal areas.
The last day of the 18-day session was also marked by an hour’s suspension of proceedings due to lack of quorum and a rare halving of the question hour by the speaker angered by the absence of some questioners.
While the People’s Party Parliamentarians, forming a major chunk of the opposition, continued its partial boycott of the proceedings for the fourth day, the house hurriedly passed without any debate a bill providing for one year’s extension to the National Database and Registration Authority chairman’s three-year tenure before a controversial draft to create a Defence Housing Authority in Islamabad was left unfinished amid opposition threats to break the quorum.
During some confused proceedings in the presence of Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, the house also passed a resolution condemning the murder of Punjab Social Welfare Minister Zille Huma on Tuesday in what it called an “extreme form of terrorism” and demanded a speedy trial of her killer under the Anti-Terrorist Act.
In what was a day of some symbolic concessions of the ruling coalition to the religious parties, the house passed a resolution sponsored by some women members of the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal that condemned what it called “acts of terrorism” in the Damadola village of the Bajaur tribal area and in Waziristan, demanded payment of compensation for the dead, including women, and said “the perpetrators of such acts are outside the pale of Islam”.
The resolution, moved by MMA member Aisha Munawar, did not identify those who carried out such acts. But the reference seemed directed at missile strikes of recent months in Bajaur and Waziristan that were blamed either on the US-led forces in neighbouring Afghanistan or owned by the Pakistani military as part of its operations against foreign militants and their local harbourers.
No objection was raised from the ruling coalition to the resolution when it was put to vote, before Speaker Chaudhry Amir Hussain read out a presidential order proroguing the house after what was the first session of its last and fifth parliamentary year ending on November 15.
In an earlier concession, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Sher Afgan Niazi agreed to incorporate an amendment to the house’s new rules of procedure from MMA member Maulana Mohammad Khan Shirani that prohibited moving any legislation contrary to Quran and Sunnah, although such a bar already exists in the Constitution.
A note of dissent by three opposition members of a 17-member special committee on the rules of procedure and conduct of business said some rules, such as suspension of a member, were being “modified to browbeat the opposition into submission” and that these would prove counter-productive because of the country’s “fragile democratic institutions”.
