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LAHORE, Dec 13: Legislators of the ruling PML-N and opposition PPP exchanged hot words in the Punjab Assembly session on Tuesday after criticising each other’s senior leadership.
Opposition Leader Raja Riaz, on a point of order, questioned continuous absence of Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif from the house.
He asserted that Mr Sharif’s presence would have improved performance of his cabinet members who were giving wrong or at least poor replies to the queries of lawmakers who then made the chair form a house committee for probing the incorrect answers.
He deduced that Shahbaz Sharif, being a billionaire, chief minister and brother of Nawaz Sharif, considered it his insult to sit with MPAs like Dr Asad Ashraf. He wondered whether the chief minister avoided a “foul smell of these poor members”.
Alleging favouritism in executive appointments, Raja Riaz said an officer of the rank of magistrate was appointed Faisalabad DCO who was now serving the cause of the Sharifs as their personal servant.
The DCO, he alleged, was removing his hoardings citing traffic problems while Law Minister Rana Sanaullah ignored his requests for setting up a committee to resolve the issue. Also, he pleaded to the chair to play his role in release of Rs80 million funds for opposition legislators.
The opposition leader asked the Sharifs to go back to Jeddah (a taunt on the Sharifs’ exile in 2000) if they could not bear the sight of the tricolour (PPP) flag.
This provoked some women PML-N legislators who started raising slogans against the NRO.
An irritated Raja Riaz warned of retaliation if Shahbaz Sharif turned up in the house ever ‘by mistake’.
Taking the floor, PML-N’s Asghar Manda first complained to the chair for violating rules in allowing more than three supplementary questions leaving little time to take up other important questions.
Then addressing the opposition leader, he said that before talking of the chief minister’s absence, the PPP man should reveal what made President Asif Zardari leave the country.
Claiming that the memo scandal made the PPP co-chairperson flee the country, he asserted had Mr Zardari been ill, his only son (Bilawal) would not have kept sitting here in the Presidency.
This inflamed the opposition PPP members who insisted on paying the rivals back in the same coin as acting speaker Rana Mashhud tried to cool them down by telling the treasury that talking of one’s health is unbecoming and that the law minister must make his colleagues understand it.
He also warned that personal attacks would leave little room for running the proceedings smoothly.
Calling Mr Manda a dwarf of one-and-a-half feet, he said how the MPA dared to talk of President Zardari, who had served years in jail, while PML-N’s own leadership could not afford to spend even a single night in jail.
As Zakat Minister Malik Nadeem Kamran explained that it were Raja Riaz’s remarks (against Shahbaz Sharif) that set in the ugly scene, the opposition leader clarified that he had just sought presence of the chief minister in the house so that the performance of the provincial cabinet could improve.
RESOLUTIONS: The house approved four resolutions put up by private members. The first one tabled by Naseem Nasir Khwaja recommended that the Punjab government make study of the Holy Quran, with translation and commentary, as well as Ahadith a part of syllabus for up to matric students.
PML-N’s Nighat Sheikh claimed that the resolution was originally hers but the assembly secretariat mistakenly attributed it to the other MPA.
The chair directed the assembly secretary to look into the matter.
The second resolution by Q League’s Samina Khawar sought the federal government to regularise grade-14 to 18 employees of the Utility Stores Corporation. The same party’s Mohsin Leghari suggested reserving seats for students from other provinces in the Dera Ghazi Khan Medical College to promote brotherhood among all federating units.
Q League’s Zobia Rubab Malik asked for tehsil status for Bhera (Sargodha) in view of the town’s ancient history, and literary and cultural importance.
BOYCOTT: Members of the Press Gallery Committee observed a token boycott of house proceedings to demand materialisation of the government’s promises regarding provision of residential plots to 295 journalists, removal of land-grabbers from Journalists’ Colony and starting the stalled development work there.
Desisting from giving any assurance on 295 new plots, the law minister promised his help in resolving the other two issues. He, however, told the house that Lahore Press Club President Sarmad Bashir had been with him for quite some time the previous day but did not talk of any such issue.
QUORUM: The chair could not meet its promise of allowing points of order to various members after the notified agenda of the sitting was accomplished as Samina Khawar pointed out a lack of quorum in the house.
She violated the unwritten norm that quorum issue is not raised during private members day.
The acting speaker adjourned the proceedings for Wednesday morning as ringing of bells for five minutes failed to assemble the required minimum strength, 94 in the house of 371, of MPAs for continuing the sitting.
