ISLAMABAD: The National Assembly on Tuesday failed to take up any item on the 70-point agenda due to a fracas that broke out following a verbal clash between the treasury and opposition members after the two sides once again targeted each other’s leadership with “personal attacks”, forcing Deputy Speaker Qasim Suri to abruptly adjourn the sitting when the opposition successfully prevented a minister from responding to their speeches after staging a walkout and pointing out quorum.

Throughout the hour-long proceedings, the deputy speaker was seen struggling to bring order to the house as the members from both sides of the aisle continued to ignore his directives and kept on raising slogans and demanding the floor.

The house first saw a rumpus when members of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) from Karachi had a verbal clash with each other while discussing issues being faced by the people of the provincial capital and then there was a free-for-all situation when outspoken Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) MNA from Sheikhupura Mian Javed Latif lambasted the government over the Monday’s verdict of the Supreme Court in the Paragon housing society corruption case, stating that the court’s order had exp­osed “the NAB-Niazi nexus” — a term being used by the opposition while alleging that the National Accounta­bility Bureau (NAB) is being used by Prime Minister Imran Khan as a tool for political engineering.

Members make personal attacks against each other’s leadership

At one point, Mr Suri had to suspend the proceedings for 15 minutes when the PPP members lodged a strong noisy protest over his refusal to give the floor to party MNA Abdul Qadir Patel to respond to the speeches made by two ruling PTI members from Karachi — Attaullah and Alamgir Khan.

The two PTI MNAs had been provided complete opportunity by the chair to speak out against the PPP leadership in the absence of the opposition members when they had staged a token walkout over the “abduction” of senior journalist Matiullah Jan in broad daylight from Islamabad.

Succumbing to the opposition’s pressure, the deputy speaker finally gave the floor to Mr Patel when the house resumed its proceedings. Mr Patel not only hit out at the two PTI MNAs, calling them “water thieves and manhole covers thieves”, but also turned his guns towards Prime Minister Imran Khan, accusing him of patronising “corrupts and mafias”.

Mr Patel said the two Karachi MNAs “who were allowed to speak” against the PPP could not even win a councillor seat from Karachi.

PML-N’s Javed Latif in his hard-hitting speech called PM Khan “the present day General Yahya Khan” and said the time had come to get the country rid of the present regime.

“Come out Maulana Fazlur Rehman, Bilawal and Maryam Nawaz before it is too late,” the PML-N MNA said, asking the opposition leaders to launch a decisive movement to oust the present regime.

“We will have to save Pakistan from today’s Yahya Khan,” he said, referring to the former military dictator who, according to him, had also used the slogan of accountability and “abused” parliament.

Like Gen Yahya Khan, he said, the present chief executive of the country [PM Khan] had also once abused this parliament when he was in the opposition. “For those who have brought him [PM Khan] to power, he will be the most obedient [person]. But those who have brought him must know and perhaps they have realised that Pakistan has been ruined and his departure is now certain,” Mr Latif said, without elaborating.

Referring to the Supreme Court’s verdict in the housing scam case against party legislator Khawaja Saad Rafique, the PML-N MNA said the apex court had declared that NAB had become an institution of “revenge”, instead of accountability.

In his apparent reference to the remarks of some of the apex court’s judges against former prime minister Nawaz Sharif during the hearing of the Panama Papers case, he said that some of the people who have now retired had passed some remarks against the national leaders which were “inappropriate”.

Mr Latif alleged that presently Pakistan was witnessing “huge corruption” which it had never seen before that was evident from the recent “sugar, wheat, medicines and dollar scams”.

The deputy speaker then gave the floor to hot-headed Communications Minister Murad Saeed to respond to Mr Latif’s speech, but the opposition lodged a strong protest over it, asking the chair to take up the normal business as they had only responded to the speeches delivered by the PTI members from Karachi.

However, when the deputy speaker ignored their demand and gave the floor to Mr Saeed, the opposition members staged a walkout leaving behind PPP’s Agha Rafiullah to point out quorum. After finding that the quorum was not complete, for which the presence of 86 members (one-fourth of the 342-member house) is required, the deputy speaker adjourned the session till Thursday morning.

Earlier, PTI’s Attaullah, while referring to the last week’s news conference of PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, alleged that it was the PPP which had allowed Karachi Electric (KE) to enter into agreements with any other company in violation of the rules. He said that on the one hand, the PPP was providing benefits to KE and, on other hand, wrongly accusing the PTI of patronising the power utility.

Mr Attaullah also questioned the Rs1.5 billion assets declared by Mr Bhutto-Zardari and said an explanation should be sought from him.

Published in Dawn, July 22nd, 2020