ISLAMABAD, Aug 2: Sad over the death of a ruling party woman member in China, a poorly attended National Assembly on Thursday also mourned the loss of all of its question hours during the four days of its current session mainly due to a frenzied debate on poor law and order.
The house adjourned without taking up its agenda as a mark of mourning for Pakistan Muslim League member and parliamentary secretary for social welfare and special education Begum Rifat Amjad, who Speaker Chaudhry Amir Hussain said had died in Beijing, where she had reportedly gone for the treatment of a liver ailment.
The agenda included an unfinished speech by Interior Minister Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao that was interrupted on Thursday by an embarrassing lack of quorum due to a protest walkout by religious parties and was put off again by the chair until Friday when the house will meet at 9.30am.
The issue was question hours, which were suspended during previous days of the session to allow time for the opposition-sought debate on last month’s deadly military operation at Islamabad’s Lal Masjid and a subsequent wave of suicide bombings in the country, came after the Speaker said there would be no question hour on Friday as well so the interior minister could finish his speech and the house hold a debate also on the recent devastating floods before adjourning for Friday prayers.
Several members from both sides of the house seemed unhappy over the continuous loss of the question hour, an important tool of parliamentary accountability of a government.
Even after announcing the adjournment of the house, the chair allowed members to give their views, the dominant view being for keeping the question hour on the agenda, even if it meant declaring all questions to be taken as read without any supplementary questions being asked.
There was a very thin attendance of members on both the treasury and opposition benches when the assembly met in the morning late by about an hour and it seemed any opposition member could again bloc Mr Sherpao’s speech by pointing out the lack of the required 86-member quorum in the 342-seat house.
Absenteeism of ruling party members has been the bane of nearly five years of the present National Assembly, and Wednesday’s opposition snub for the same reason was humiliating as it happened in the presence of Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and PML president Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain.
