ISLAMABAD: Their absence evoked little love in the National Assembly on Tuesday for some of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s senior ministers who occupy front benches with him in the house.

Desk-thumping cheers of support erupted not only from opposition benches, but also from back benches of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) when opposition leader Khursheed Ahmed Shah demanded that the prime minister punish the usually erring ministers with at least three days’ suspension.

The opposition leader, taking the floor at the start of the day’s proceedings, blasted treasury benches with unusual vigour for a chronic ministerial absenteeism in parliament and received support even from Deputy Speaker Murtaza Javed Abbasi who, chairing the house for the day, blamed government weakness for the ministers’ absence.

Tuesday’s was the latest in a series of embarrassment to the government over poor attendance of lawmakers or ministers, such as a premature adjournment of the house on Friday for lack of quorum and an unprecedented happening in the country’s parliamentary history on Monday when most of the question hour was deferred for late evening because of the absence of several lawmakers and ministers’ concerned.

It was Commerce Minister Khurram Dastgir who was found to be the main culprit for absence on Monday.

Though he arrived later and responded to questions related to his charge, he was the target of a bitter rebuke from a senior colleague, Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, who said he would put the matter of such ministerial lapses before the prime minister.

NISAR ON RECEIVING END: But Chaudhry Nisar, one of the day’s missing ministers, seemed to be at the receiving end on Tuesday, as Mr Shah, without naming him, complained of “one minister who boycotts parliament and there is nobody to ask him” for that, and said anybody ignoring parliament in this way “has no right to remain a minister”.

This was a reference to the interior minister’s absence from Senate for more than a year and his failure to turn up there on Jan 6 and, instead, the prime minister addressed the upper house before and after it passed the Constitution (Twenty-first Amendment) Bill providing for military court trials of terrorism suspects.

Mr Shah urged the chair to do something to discipline “these five or six men who don’t come to the house”, but said “you too wouldn’t be able to do anything because you are helpless”. He warned that if the ministers did come on Wednesday “we will not sit here with long faces”.

While justifying the opposition leader’s complaint, an apparently provoked deputy speaker said weakness was not of the chair but of the government as it had failed to bring its ministers to the house.

Inter-Provincial Coordination Minister Riaz Hussain Pirzada tried a feeble attempt at damage control on behalf of his missing colleagues, but he soon seemed nonplussed when no minister was prepared to speak on behalf of Defence Minister Khwaja Mohammad Asif to respond to a call-attention notice from three ruling party members.

Before a few ministers and ministers of state present could recover from shock inflicted by Mr Shah, several independent members from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) staged a walkout against the allegedly autocratic attitude of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Governor Sardar Mehtab Ahmed Khan, who oversees the Fata region on behalf of the federal government.

One protesting Fata lawmaker, Haji Shah Jee Gul Afridi, warned the government of a sit-in, by displaced people from Fata at the D-Chowk outside the parliament or a strike by Fata people if their grievances were not addressed.

Mr Shah also led a token walkout by PPP members in sympathy with Fata lawmakers, whom he brought back to the house after a while. But they all left the house again.

SOME LEGISLATIVE BUSINESS: On what was a private members’ day, the house received a report from its standing committee on parliamentary affairs recommending the passage of a private bill of PPP members Nafisa and Azra Fazal Pechuho to require every political party to select a minimum of 10 per cent female candidates for elective offices for general seats and have a minimum 33 per cent quota for women in its elected general council and in any associated party committee and forum at federal, provincial and local levels, and to provide that women members shall be elected to a minimum of 10 percent of elected offices.

Two other private bills were referred to standing committees concerned, one of PPP Senator Moula Bakhsh Soomro, already passed by Senate and providing for protection to properties of overseas Pakistanis from illegal possession by “qabza mafias” and individuals, and the other of PPP MNA Balum Hasnain seeking provision of accessibility to disabled people at every public place, such as allocation of seats in public transport, facilities on footpaths for wheelchairs and priority to “special citizens” at road crossings.

FIVE MORE PTI ABSENTEES NAMED: At the start of the sitting, the deputy speaker named five more members of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf for their absence from the house for 40 consecutive days. They could be de-seated by the house for their absence.

The five — PTI vice chairman Shah Mahmood Qureshi, information secretary Shirin Mazari, Arif Alvi, Sajid Nawaz and Amjad Ali Khan Niazi – and four absentees named on Monday are among 40 party lawmakers who had sent resignations in mid-August as part of a party protest campaign against alleged rigging in the 2013 general elections.

The resignations remain unaccepted, except one of defecting party president Javed Hashmi, while government and PTI negotiators have failed to produce a solution of the controversy acceptable to both sides and party chairman Imran Khan has threatened to resume the sit-in.

Published in Dawn January 14th , 2015

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