Parliament’s explosive budget session

It’s worse than what you see on television. As an irrepressible believer in the power of democracy, I was shocked and disappointed by what I saw with my eyes in Parliament during the budgetary session. There is no politics of principle in this house; it’s a debate club for fifteen year olds and off camera, all of them are friends. They have more in common with each other, than with us.

The budgetary session began with recitation from the Quran, in which, intentionally or unintentionally, verses that spoke in support of spending on orphans and the underprivileged and against wasteful spending were read. Hammad Azhar, the man of the hour who would present the budget, entered the room like a gladiator but no opposition was present to hoot. For those of us without mobile signals in Parliament, we wondered if the opposition was boycotting the session. Turned out they were just late (surprisingly, the session itself started on the dot — at the 5pm time it was billed).

As Hammad talked about all the positive measures in the budget (the tough ones would come later), opposition began trickling in wearing black bands on their arms. They ran out of black bands so some female MNAs stood with black tapes and a cutting scissor to help their comrades.

Ironically, as soon as Hammad started reading the tough measures in the budget, Bilawal turned around and tried to signal his members to begin protesting. Shazia Marri, who had been smuggling protest posters into the room and passing them onto the PML-N members too, led the charge like a battlefield general and the hoot started. It didn’t feel like menacing hooting; the mood was festive, like we had arrived at a birthday party in a boys’ dorm at midnight kind of hooting.

A PML-N MNA started ripping apart budget papers and throwing them on PTI MNAs. By accident, his hand toppled the namaz ki topi one of the PTI MNAs was wearing. A fist fight broke out which was quickly defused by members of both the parties. If adults like us behaved the way our parliamentarians did, we wouldn’t just be kicked out of the house but out of our families too. But alas, we the taxpayers, pay for these grown men and women to act like children as they decide our future.

As the opposition members screamed ‘Go Niazi Go’ chants from the speaker’s dais, PTI MNA Faisal Vawda walked over to Bilawal and started chilling like he had just met an old friend. Bilawal, meanwhile, had already been schmoozing with Akhtar Mengal, who was a coalition partner with the PTI government. To my right side in the gallery, Miftah Ismail, who would lead the attack on the budget from the PML-N side, couldn’t find a seat to sit. The ex-governor Sindh, Mohammad Zubair, vacated his seat so that Miftah could quickly read the budget documents.

Another thing that surprised me was how close Imran Khan and Shehbaz Sharif were sitting. They avoided eye contact but sat so close that if they both extended their arms, they could shake hands while sitting. In the end, the opposition fell into the PTI’s honey trap of heating up the accountability space. They created so much noise that even I — sitting in Parliament — couldn’t hear any of the tough measures in the budget. If the budget was really so bad, they should have let the Pakistani people hear and make their decision.

Finally, at the end of the session, political party leaders were escorted out of the house by their members, like a groom being protected from the bride’s sisters during a ‘joota chupai’ game. It was a theatre of the absurd. A fun evening out for them that shook the very foundation of my belief in how this Parliament functions. I still strongly believe that elected representatives are the only power that can change our country for the better, but we have to start electing better leaders.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 16^th, 2019.

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