The Backbencher: MPAs discuss handbags, charas, Samad Bond and more

Chawla asks Shehla Raza to get women a cupboard to keep their bags as it was difficult to navigate the narrow aisle.

The Sindh Assembly session on Tuesday had all the makings of a Shakespearean tragedy.

There was a lot of drama, death and lengthy soliloquies as members of the opposition played the part of the protagonists while the MPAs sitting on the treasury benches accepted their role as the antagonists.

It started with the leader of the opposition, Faisal Subzwari, bringing up a topic he had touched in Monday’s session - sectarian violence and missing persons belonging to his party. He said members of the MQM had been dragged out of their houses by men dressed in plain clothes. These men, the party believes, had to be from the Rangers, police or the intelligence agencies.

This led to an argument with the members of the treasury benches. Information minister Sharjeel Memon and parliamentary affairs minister Sikandar Mandhro kept asking the MQM MPAs how they could tell the difference between a target killing, a sectarian killing or a murder. They asked for proof and witnesses. The MQM said family members had seen their loved ones being taken away. An MPA stood up and shouted: “Do you want us to bring their bodies here?”

As the argument grew heated, Memon asked the MQM to explain how they defined the term ‘extra-judicial killings’.

Other MPAs were sitting on the edge of their seats, all smartphones were kept away as they waited for the opposition’s next move. Cameramen could be seen hanging off the press gallery trying to get the perfect shot of MQM MPAs making fiery statements.

Shehla Raza tried to calm both sides down but failed to do so. The MPAs sitting in the opposition decided to rise and started protesting. They shouted slogans asking for justice and tore up their copies of the assembly’s daily agenda and threw it in the air. Raza tried to continue with the sessions but the MQM MPAs kept disrupting. The session ended abruptly at 1:30pm with Raza and MPAs from the treasury bench rushing out.

The hour-long, question-answer session also became quite intense as Mukesh Chawla had to answer tricky questions from Nusrat Abbasi and MQM’s Moin Aamir Pirzada about the sale of alcohol, charas, illegal weapons, an addiction to Samad Bond and more charas. The excise and taxation minister sat in the first seat of the second row and looked prepared to answer anything, which he did in extreme detail.

One of the most important rulings of the day was passed right after the question-answer hour. The deputy speaker asked the female MPAs to remove their handbags from the aisle as many of their male colleagues trip over the ladies handbags. This was done on a request from the excise and taxation minister.

Chawla asked Shehla Raza to get the women a cupboard or some space to keep their bags as it was difficult for men to navigate the narrow aisle. While said in jest, it was taken seriously by Raza who politely asked the women to set their handbags aside.

The session showed that the MPAs like drama and they revel in it. Yesterday Khurram Sher Zaman walked out when the deputy speaker refused to listen to his rant about wine shops in residential neighbourhoods. But on Tuesday, the MQM stole the show.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 16^th, 2014.