IT ought to be self-evident: parliamentary debate is necessary and important, and coming to parliamentary fisticuffs is embarrassing and damaging to democracy. What transpired in the National Assembly on Thursday is shameful and squarely the responsibility of the speaker, the PTI and the PML-N. The unseemly brawl on the floor of the house should never have happened. Worryingly, none of the parties involved seems contrite nor concerned about avoiding a repeat incident. The imperatives of democracy appear to have been relegated behind a boisterous and disturbingly familiar type of politics. Start with the role of National Assembly speaker Ayaz Sadiq. While there was nothing wrong per se in his oversight of the house in the events leading up to the brawl on Thursday, Mr Sadiq has become a lightning rod for opposition criticism, particularly for the PTI. Contrast the non-partisan and sensible management of the National Assembly by speaker Fehmida Mirza in the previous parliament with Mr Sadiq’s contentious role. Following his return to the speaker’s chair after a charged by-election victory against a PTI candidate, Mr Sadiq appears to have lost sight of his principal role as a neutral steward of the house. Even where his rulings are fair and sensible, Mr Sadiq often appears exasperated and is curt in his dealings with the opposition. He ought to reconsider his approach while chairing the house.

Certainly, the PTI must bear a great deal of the blame too. The party appears to be suffering from at least three problems: a party leadership that is contemptuous of parliamentary norms; several first-time MNAs who are neither guided nor restrained by senior party colleagues; and a determination to create as much controversy whenever possible to highlight the PTI’s anti-government politics. While the political dividends of such a strategy can be disputed, what is clear is that the PTI will get nowhere in its avowed goal of strengthening the anti-corruption regime if democratic processes are constantly stalled or disregarded. The PTI itself had demanded a parliamentary debate recently, so why not use the platform of a new session to press its political and legislative case? Sadly, the PTI’s interest in positively contributing to the functioning of democratic institutions appears limited at best.

Finally, though by no means of least consequence, is the PML-N’s own tawdry role in the parliamentary brawl of Thursday. Whatever justification the PML-N believes it may have, two factors override that entirely. First, the PML-N is the governing party and as such the chief custodian of the democratic project in the country. It must always rise above petty provocation rather than descend into the muck of slander and brawling. Second, the senior leadership of the PML-N knows well what unseemly parliamentary fights and squabbles led to in the 1990s. The government may not want to turn the other cheek, but it must rise above petty provocations.

Published in Dawn, January 28th, 2017