Commotion in the house : Asif jeers at Mazari, triggers uproar

PPP MNA joins PTI in protest; speaker expunges minister’s remarks

ISLAMABAD: A senior cabinet minister jeered at a woman lawmaker from the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf triggering a verbal duel between treasury and opposition MPs in the lower house of parliament on Wednesday.

Khawaja Asif, who holds key portfolios of defence and water & power, ridiculed Dr Shireen Mazari for her appearance and unusual voice. And surprisingly, he stubbornly refused to apologise for his unprecedented taunt. “I was heckled,” the angry minister said justifying his abusive comments.

More surprisingly, Speaker Sardar Ayaz Sadiq, the soft-spoken custodian of the house, also refused to expunge Asif’s remarks from the proceedings until PTI lawmakers stopped making noise and returned to their seats.



His office demands he remains neutral, but Sadiq sided with Asif saying the PTI lawmakers had interrupted the minister’s speech with sloganeering. “I’m the custodian of this house but I’ll not follow your dictates,” he said directly addressing the PTI MPs.

After the unpleasant hiatus, Asif resumed his speech. But Dr Mazari and Dr Arif Alvi kept protesting while their party colleagues went back to their seats. In the meantime PPP lawmaker Dr Nafeesa Shah jumped into the fray. She not only joined Dr Mazari and Dr Alvi in their protest but also prodded other PTI MPs to support their female party colleague.

At this point, Syed Naveed Qamar of the PPP intervened and requested Asif to “take back his controversial comments.” Interestingly, the speaker sprang into action before the minister could say anything. “… Sorry, I’m not going to be dictated by them [PTI].  They can do this [ruckus] out in streets but I won’t let this happen here,” Sadiq added. “Enough is enough.”

Finally, the speaker expunged Asif’s remarks from the proceedings and allowed Dr Mazari to speak. “It seems Asif comes [to the house] to humiliate women,” she said before repeating the words Asif once used for the PTI: “Koi sharm hoti hai koi haya hoti hai.”

The unparliamentary episode happened when the minister was responding to questions raised by leader of the opposition Khursheed Shah about the electricity situation in the country.



He claimed that the government has added 2,665MW of electricity to the national grid in the last three years, and by 2018 the overall generation capacity would be increased to 31,000MW. “The opposition keeps the government on its toes but I’ve not seen such a lazy opposition in parliament,” he added.

Then Asif turned his guns to the PTI. “Their own members MNAs and MPAs have started questioning the ‘change’ their party has promised,” he said. “They [PTI] have miserably failed to deliver.”

About the Panamagate scandal, Asif said it would become history in the next 10-15 days.  A parliamentary committee tasked to draft terms of reference (ToRs) for an investigation into the Panama Papers revelations is still bickering over the mode of inquiry.

Taking part in the budget debate, Chaudhry Sarwar contested the government’s figures, saying they were not based on reality whereas Yousaf Talpur from the PPP lamented that the budget was presented in the absence of a census and NFC award.

Parvez Malik from the PML-N asked his government to reduce tax from proposed 20% to 15% on rented property. “Similarly, there is no justification for imposing duty on stationery which is not a luxury,” he said. The government has cited misuse of stationery as a reason for the proposed move but Malik said: “What will be the misuse of a sharpener, a pencil or a geometry box.”

Earlier, MQM lawmakers staged a walkout against last night’s Rangers raid in the neighbourhood where Dr Farooq Sattar’s residence is located in Karachi.

In the beginning of the proceedings, Awami Muslim League chief Sheikh Rashid Ahmed asked the speaker to take notice over the absence of federal ministers from the house. “They reach the GHQ two hours before time for a meeting, but they don’t bother to come here,” he added.

PTI’s Shafqat Mahmood called the government’s growth figures a pack of lies. “These are vague, fake and fudged figures,” he said. The government claims that the agriculture growth was 0.2 which was negative while never in the history of Pakistan the growth rate was as high as claimed by the government. “These are all lies.”

The speaker stopped him further from speaking and allowed PML-N’s Tahira Aurangzeb to continue from the treasury side. She started parroting a written speech without taking a breath and kept praising Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and all the development works.

She suggested there was no need to make fuss about the Panama leaks. “Let’s move forward as making offshore companies is the right of Imran Khan and Nawaz Sharif and let’s prepare for the upcoming elections.”

Published in The Express Tribune, June 9^th, 2016.