ISLAMABAD: The National Assembly was dreary on Wednesday because of absenteeism and boycotts, and the lawmakers who attended hardly performed, uninspired by this spring’s brightest sunshine outside.

The opposition Muttahida Qaumi Movement stayed away from the session for second day running in an undeclared boycott over last week’s security raid on its headquarters in Karachi, further depleting the house after seven months of boycott by the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) over alleged rigging in the 2013 general elections.

Take a look: Pact of silence spares MQM in NA

But the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-N and the main opposition Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) were the main culprits for the pathetically low attendance on the third day of the spring session.

Empty ministerial benches presented the most desolate picture in the 342-seat house, whose population at a time did not seem to exceed 30 though the quorum must be at least 86.

The proceedings continued uninterrupted because no one pointed out the lack of quorum.

MQM lawmakers came only on the opening day of the session on Monday, but disappeared the next day after an apparent understanding with Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan that they would not stage a protest in the house against the March 11 raid on the party office called “Nine Zero” by paramilitary Rangers while he would not make a statement about the matter on the floor of the house.

House Speaker Sardar Ayaz Sadiq, while talking to parliamentary reporters on Wednesday, confirmed that MQM members had withdrawn an adjournment motion they had submitted seeking a debate on the raid in which the Rangers said they had seized a large quantity of illegal weapons and detained dozens of party activists from “Nine Zero” and surrounding streets.

There has been no word yet from the MQM until when its 23 members will absent themselves from the house while the party’s face-off continued with the Rangers. The paramilitary force got a criminal case registered with a Karachi police station on Tuesday against the party’s self-exiled supreme leader Altaf Hussain for allegedly threatening officers of the force who conducted the raid on “Nine Zero”, a charge the MQM denies.

Speculation was rife in the parliamentary corridors that about 30 PTI lawmakers might be preparing to end their boycott, which began in mid-August when the party staged a long protest sit-in outside the parliament house, after a party candidate filed his nomination papers for a by-election for a National Assembly seat in Karachi.

Asked about the possibility of PTI’s return to the house, the speaker said there would be no justification for their boycott after an election tribunal’s decision on PTI chairman Imran Khan’s challenge to the speaker’s election from a seat in Lahore.

However, he said that PTI lawmakers would remain entitled to their salaries as house members until the house passed a resolution for their disqualification as members for remaining absent without leave for more than 40 days.

But for the present, payment of their salaries was withheld.

ISLAMABAD BILL DEFERRED: The government’s only legislative business on the day’s agenda — a provision for an elected local government system for Islamabad — was deferred soon after the question hour on the demand of opposition leader Khursheed Ahmed Shah for the sake of a consensus on the draft, which seeks to replace the existing Capital Development Authority with an elected Metropolitan Corporation and union councils.

A debate on petrol shortages that occurred in January and another on “the problems being faced by internally displaced persons in the country” continued to be on the agenda from previous session and were not resumed before the house was adjourned until 11am on Thursday.

A call-attention notice by a ruling party member, Shaista Pervaiz, about fears of Pakistan facing a drought in the future, brought assurances from Minister of State for Water and Power Abid Sher Ali that the government had plans to avert this threat by building river dams with the consensus of all provinces.

Another call-attention notice sent by five MQM members over fears of unemployment resulting from the planned privatisation of profit-making state entities was dropped because of the absence of its authors.

Published in Dawn, March 19th, 2015

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