ISLAMABAD, Oct 9: Taking it easy after a tense presidential election, a depleted National Assembly on Tuesday failed to discuss the country’s recent flour crisis owing to the absence of the minister in charge before being prorogued after the briefest business of a session in nearly five years of its life.
However, a poorly attended assembly held a low-key inconclusive debate over poverty with the People’s Party Parliamentarians left as the only opposition group in the lower house after last week’s resignations by about 85 members of other opposition parties to protest against Saturday’s parliamentary electoral college that elected President Pervez Musharraf for another five-year term.
On what was a private members’ day, a heated discussion would have taken place on a call-attention notice by four PPP members on wheat flour prices that rocketed to record highs last month despite a record and surplus domestic production of wheat this year and sparked nationwide protests against manipulation blamed on government functionaries.
But Speaker Chaudhry Amir Hussain deferred the matter to an unknown future date because Food and Agriculture Minister Sikandar Hayat Bosan was not present to answer queries from the authors of the notice that said the price increases had caused a “grave concern” among the public, though some ruling party members pointed out the situation had lately eased.
A brief debate on a resolution moved by a PPP member, Yasmeen Rehman, calling upon the government to “take immediate steps to eradicate poverty” in the country, also remained listless before M. P. Bhandara of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League tried to open the old wounds by predicting a return of what he called a “reign of loot and plunder” as seen in the 1990s.
But a PPP member, Fauzia Wahab, paid him in the same coin, saying Mr Bhandara’s lambaste against a “democratic era” reflected an attitude that could only strengthen dictatorship though she did not particularly respond to his remarks about what had been known as Surrey Palace in Britain allegedly bought by the Bhutto family and which, according to the PML member, had been sold to an unspecified Qatari billionaire at six times the previous price.
Ruling party member Riaz Hussain Pirzada complained of alleged corruption of possibly billions of rupees in toll and fine collection on the Islamabad-Lahore Motorway and cited a recent personal experience when he said he had declined the offer of a Rs100 cut at a toll plaza if he did not ask for a receipt of the amount paid.
He demanded that the government check the software used by the National Highway Authority in its computers at the toll collection points and said: “You may find a scam of billions (of rupees).”
Another PML member, Kashmala Tariq, supported her party colleague’s demand and quoted an Indian Sikh as telling her, while praising Pakistani hospitality during her recent visit to India, that a policeman on the Motorway let him off without any fine for his car speeding to up to 180km an hour.
Parliamentary Affairs Minister Sher Afgan Khan Niazi promised to do something to stop the alleged corruption on the Motorway if Mr Pirzada gave him a written complaint, before Deputy Speaker Sardar Mohammad Yaqub read out the presidential order proroguing the house after only one regular sitting after its start on Saturday, which lacked the usual heat in the absence of most of the opposition parties because of their resignations.
The assembly held only a token sitting on Saturday morning to allow the use of its chamber as a polling station for voting by itself and the 100-seat Senate in what was a one-sided election held later the same day and won by General Musharraf, though the Supreme Court has ordered against notifying the winner until it rules over challenges to his unprecedented candidacy as army chief.
Strangely, the issue of the presidential election, which remains the hottest topic in Pakistan and is also being contested in the Supreme Court after resignations by parties grouped in the All Parties Democratic Movement and a vote boycott by the PPP, was not raised on Tuesday in the National Assembly, which is the core of its 1,170-member, but 702-vote, electoral college.
