Empty rhetoric, slogans - highpoints of a dull assembly session
Since I started writing on parliamentary proceedings in February 1985, there was never once a dull moment.
Ever since I started writing on parliamentary proceedings in February 1985, there was never once a dull moment: I always felt like a charged participant of a thrilling drama. But sitting in the parliamentary gallery on Thursday after a five-year gap was a huge let down.
Lawmakers’ aversion to punctuality has now become ‘almost a routine’, I was told.
There were just 40 legislators who appeared to want to go through the motion of a question-hour. Surprisingly, none of them appeared to be armed with any exciting piece of information.
Farahnaz Ispahani tried to agitate over the proliferation of hoardings in Islamabad, which ruined natural beauty in and around the federal capital, through a call-attention notice.
Seth Kishan Chand Parwani also tried to stir up a scandal through a similar motion. Although he was right in declaring that expensive properties, abandoned by non-Muslims and managed by the Evacuee Trust Board, were being doled out to influential bureaucrats and persons with the right kind of clout and connections. Sadly, he lacked facts and was unable to spice up his story.
In due course, we came to ‘regular business of the day,’ i.e., lawmakers’ debate on presidential address to the joint sitting of parliament.
Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao, a veteran and consummate politician from Khyber-Pakthunkhwa, tried to take the lead. The politician, who refused to cower behind security screens despite several extraordinarily vicious and deadly attacks on his person and family, did not, however, deliver a speech reflective of his experience and courage.
Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, who sat on the seat of the leader of the opposition in the National Assembly, along with a group of 20-plus PML-N wallahs, waiting for the right opportunity, ready to pounce and put up a noisy show.
They exploited the opportunity for this when one of their MNAs from Balochistan, Gen (retd) Qadir Baloch rose to deliver a speech.
This general-turned-politician belongs to a rare class if seen in the context of Balochistan: he ended up as a governor of his home province under former president Pervez Musharraf after serving as a corp commander in a presumably Punjabi-dominated Pakistan Army. Who else but he could educate us why the mass of Baloch youth is alarmingly alienated from the whole idea of a Pakistani state. But after making a few passing remarks on frightening realities in Balochistan, he opted to passionately focus on drone attacks.
Speaking in the assembly the other day, Gilani had claimed that his government was building up diplomatic pressure on the US with the help of friends in the international community to stop the drone strikes.
“This is not the way to stop them,” thundered the retired general while recalling the prime minister’s remarks: “We have to do it [stop the drone attacks] on our own.”
Inebriated on a patriotic high, General (retd) Baloch conveniently forgot that only a few days ago, ‘we’ had caught a CIA operative in a crowded Lahore market. The man was arrested just a few yards from where he had killed two “innocent Pakistanis” with extraordinary precision.
All visible masters of our state vowed not only to try him for murder, but for spying as well. But what happened in the end?
General Baloch’s macho rhetoric acted like a cue for PML-N backbenchers. The agitation-hardened Khwaja Saad Rafique took up the role of a cheerleader, eliciting a chorus of “drone attacks na manzoor”.
The sloganeering was punctuated by some PML-N lawmakers, who also raised some slogans, rejecting the increase in petrol prices. After a short time, the agitating lawmkaers walked out of the assembly hall without sufficiently straining their throats. It seems they want to preserve their vocal cords for a repeat performance during tomorrow’s sitting.
Still, my moles tell me that Nisar Ali Khan was angry with his people.
He is said to have reprimanded them in his chamber for putting up a ‘poor show’. Surely, this proud Rajput from the martial Potohar plateau does not seriously believe that drones can simply be stopped by raising lung-straining slogans in Pakistan’s National Assembly? He and his party surely need to make us believe that Imran Khan and his ‘handlers’ are not alone in feeling agitated over the drone strikes.
As a veteran of parliamentary games since 1985, Nisar should think of a strategy and another set of tactics that do not appear to be cheap and pathetic.
Published in The Express Tribune, April 15th, 2011.