April 13, 2008	Sunday	Rabi-us-Sani 6, 1429

LAHORE, April 12: Unlike his usual witty expression, PPP’s Punjab Assembly parliamentary leader Raja Riaz Ahmad’s first speech after election of speaker and deputy of the house on Friday was a tirade against violators of the Constitution, laws and rules, who he alleged connived with the then speaker, ultimately resulting in their ouster.

However, his warning the new speaker against repeating the conduct of his predecessor received a "technical" blow when a party fellow, Asad Moazzam, signed the Roll of Members without taking fresh oath as required under the rules.

Mr Moazzam did take the oath along with his colleagues in the previous assembly session convened for the purpose, but he did not sign the Roll of Members and the house was prorogued. So he was required to take fresh oath in the next session which he did not.

The house, convened for ascertaining its leader, witnessed some more violations of the set rules during the Saturday's session.

Speaker Rana Muhammad Iqbal, as per rules, ordered ringing of bells for five minutes after which all entrances to the house were to be closed, disallowing any further entry before starting the process of voting to determine leader of the house.

The bells continued ringing for well over the stipulated time because perhaps PPP parliamentary leader Raja Riaz and some other PPP and PML-N members could not turn up. After a wait of around 20 minutes when everyone in the house and in galleries began noticing flouting of the rule, the chair at last directed closure of entrance to the house advancing the procedure.

The members in favour of PML-N nominee Dost Muhammad Khosa were asked to go out of the house from the "ayes" door on the right hand of the speaker while enlisting themselves in a register placed by the door. They were to stay in the lobby outside until the house got vacated and to return after the bell rang for two minutes after the vote count completed. Hardly a couple of MPAs had passed through the "ayes" door when Raja Riaz entered the house from the entrance specified for the speaker. His entry might have gone unnoticed had some party members not resorted to desk thumping to greet him.

Nazim Shah, another PPP MPA, followed in the footsteps of Raja entering the house via speaker’s door despite assembly staff’s request for fear of the Press closely monitoring the proceedings.

Six PML-N members, including Rana Tajammul, Gazala Saad Rafiq and Muhammad Husain Dogar, who were also late and could not enter the house took seats in its upper portion, though the chair had prohibited sitting there during the process. They loudly called their constituency numbers from there to get counted as Dost Khosa’s supporters.

Earlier, to the astonishment of all, Punjab PML-N president Sirdar Zulfikar Khosa, a non-member, went all the way to speaker’s chair and discussed some issue with him for a couple of minutes, against the rules which disallowed such an entry.

PML-N MPA Chaudhry Abdul Ghafoor was too ambitious to be seen with chief minister Khosa and in the effort he would not mind even to occupy the seat specified for the leader of the house.

He was politely removed from the seat by the assembly staff informing him that even if the leader of the house was absent, his seat was kept vacant as per rules of business. But the Chaudhry would lose no chance to re-occupy it. After repeated requests failed to convince him, a staff member was deployed there to keep him or any other member except the chief minister-elect away from the seat.

—Amjad Mahmood