ISLAMABAD: Tired of a week of siege by protesters, members of the National Assembly — minus those who have submitted their resignations — grumbled a lot about their plight on Tuesday with no word of hope to end the deadlock.

With the law of diminishing returns apparently sapping both the lawmakers and protesters after nearly two weeks of protests and the longest ‘dharnas’ in Pakistan’s history, the lower house was sparsely attended in the absence of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who at the time was busy discussing the situation at the Prime Minister’s House with Army Chief General Raheel Sharif.

The word about the meeting alerted everybody in the house, but made it certain he would not be coming, though nobody expected to be told what transpired between the two men.

The embattled prime minister’s silence during seven days of a government-sought debate on the situation has been somewhat disquieting for the lawmakers anxious to hear from him about talks with the protesting Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) and Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT), and particularly about his response to a revised PTI demand that he resign for only 30 days — rather than the remainder of his term — to allow a free judicial probe of allegations of a massive rigging in last year’s general elections.

Speaker Ayaz Sadiq would also not speak about the fate of resignations sent by an unspecified number of PTI lawmakers out of a total of 34 in the house as part of the party policy to press for dissolution of the National Assembly.

In an apparent move to enliven the house, a member of the Pakistan People’s Party, Ayaz Soomro, suggested, on behalf of his party, that for the unspecified remainder of its session, the house daily meet in the evening – rather than morning – to compete with the usual prime time of the two protest camps when PTI Chairman Imran Khan and PAT leader Allama Tahirul Qadri address their followers.

Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Sheikh Aftab Ahmed promised to put the proposal before the leaders of other parties in the house and said that if all parties agreed, the government would have no objection to evening sittings.

While Tuesday’s proceedings saw little change from usual denunciation of the protest ‘dharnas’ and complaints of difficulties faced in coming to and leaving the Parliament House, some members of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-N spoke harshly against a retired additional secretary of the Election Commission of Pakistan, Mohammad Afzal Khan, for his endorsement of PTI allegations of massive rigging in the May 11, 2013 elections, when he was still in office, with Mr Ahmed calling for the former official’s prosecution for alleged misstatements.

“There should be a proper inquiry held against him and he should be behind bars,” the minister of state said about Mr Khan, whose detailed interview to a private television channel on Sunday night has been quoted by protest leaders as a vindication of their own allegations that they cite as the ground for fresh elections.

Published in Dawn, August 27th, 2014