ISLAMABAD, Aug 13: A flagrant emptiness of ruling party benches marked the Independence Day eve in the National Assembly on Monday, forcing a ‘tired’ Speaker Chaudhry Amir Hussain to avoid legislation for the second day in a row.
It was clearly for lack of quorum rather than any Independence Day engagements that he skipped legislative business and adjourned the house until 5pm on Wednesday just as members of the People’s Party Parliamentarians (PPP) staged a walkout to protest against the recent appointment of former Lahore High Court judge Malik Mohammad Qayyum as the new attorney-general.
“Since the time for azaan is approaching I am also tired, the house is adjourned until 5pm on August 15,” an otherwise fresh-looking speaker said as he announced a day’s recess for the 60th anniversary of the country’s independence to be celebrated on Tuesday.
The house had failed to take up legislative business on its agenda also in its last sitting on Friday because most of about 200 members of the ruling coalition were not present to make a quorum and the opposition parties seemed unwilling to cooperate to maintain a quorum of 86 members in the 243-seat house.
Fewer ruling party members were present on Monday with opposition being in majority, making it obvious that the opposition-dominated house would either reject a controversial bill seeking to provide for the establishment of a Defence Housing Authority in Islamabad or the house would be adjourned if any member preferred to point out a lack of quorum.
As happened on Friday, the clause-by-clause consideration of the long-pending Defence Housing Authority Islamabad Bill, 2005 was the first item on the day’s 10-bill legislative agenda.
But the speaker preferred to allow members to speak on points of order rather than take up that bill after Parliamentary Affairs Minister Sher Afgan Khan Niazi laid four recently promulgated presidential ordinances before the house.
There were only a few ministers on the treasury benches and even two opposition call-attention notices were allowed to be read out but put off to Wednesday because the ministers concerned were absent.
The notices had sought government explanations for the increase of electricity charges in Karachi and non-inclusion of employees of the Supreme Court, the Election Commission and the National Assembly and Senate secretariats for the allotment of houses on ownership basis in a prime minister’s housing project.
The chair rejected PPP member Ms Naheed Khan’s point of order that described the appointment Attorney-General Malik Mohammad Qayyum as ‘unfortunate’ because of a Supreme Court ruling that had found bias in his conviction of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto in the 1990s on a corruption charge and then overturned the sentence.
“This doesn’t’ make a point of order,” the speaker ruled, provoking the PPP walkout.
