ISLAMABAD: A religious frenzy and verbal sparks — on matters other than sensational election results in neighbouring India — cut short a National Assembly debate on loadshedding on Friday, denying the water and power minister his speech as the house was prorogued a little early for lack of quorum.

A day after the Pakistan Muslim Leauge-Nawaz (PML-N) managed a large turnout of lawmakers on the occasion of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s rare visit to the house, their numbers on the last day of the session were too sparse to even complete a minimum 86-member quorum in the 342-seat chamber.

There was no mention of the Indian elections in the house, either from the treasury benches or the opposition, though by that time, televised results announced by the Indian election commission had made a landslide for the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) clear.

But at the time, the National Assembly was echoing with protests by certain opposition lawmakers. They were livid about an allegedly objectionable programme that aired on a private TV channel two days ago. These included members of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), who also staged a walkout over the alleged obstruction by the interior ministry of the process to issue a new Pakistani passport to the party’s London-based leader Altaf Hussain.

It was after some persuasion by a government ally, Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party chief Mahmood Khan Achakzai, that the mercurial Jamshed Dasti and Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) members Sahibzada Tariqullah and Sher Akbar Khan halted their outburst against the Geo TV programme, which they termed ‘blasphemous’. This allowed Syed Naveed Qamar of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) to open the debate on the matter at hand.

But after Mr Qamar lambasted the government for failing to fulfil its election promises of ending loadshedding, Tariqullah brought up the Geo issue again and demanded that the house pass a resolution calling for action by the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority.

Deputy Speaker Murtaza Javed Abbasi, who was chairing proceedings at the time, seemed to relent from his earlier refusal to let the protesters speak. But he suggested Mr Tariqullah take up the matter of a resolution with other parties.

The government, without whose support such a resolution could not be passed, did not seem very interested in the move, nor did it respond, even after another ally, Maulana Fazlur Rehman, also denounced the ‘objectionable’ programme as a manifestation of what he termed the “continuing obscenity on television channels”.

But despite the MQM walkout and several other speeches in the loadshedding debate from both sides of aisle, the JI’s Sher Akbar Khan would not let go of the Geo programme. He stood up again, shouting protests as the chair gave the floor to Minister for Water and Power Khawaja Mohammad Asif. Khan did not even stop when JI parliamentary party leader Sahibzada Tariqullah tried to physically restrain him and pulled him back down to his seat.

Mr Khan’s anger mounted as Mr Asif challenged him by holding out a paper in his hand saying “he gave me this chit (for some possible recommendation) and yet he is angry”.

But there was no respite for the minister, as PPP member Shagufta Jumani, out to settle her own score for having her speech cut short, pointed out the lack of quorum in the house. The deputy speaker, realising there was no hope of re-establishing quorum at a time when the muezzin had already called for the Friday prayers, read out a presidential order proroguing the house.

Published in Dawn, May 17th, 2014