The BackBencher: A blink-and-miss-it moment of peace in the Sindh Assembly

The piqued and miffed MPAs will find new ways of channelling their outrage on Tuesday.

KARACHI:

As Senior Education and Literacy Minister Pir Mazharul Haq jumped to his feet on Monday morning and shuttled between the Brothers Jatoi of the National Peoples Party (NPP) to the Brothers of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), I felt rather sympathetic. We all whine about Monday mornings but Haq, the parliamentary leader of the Pakistan Peoples Party, has it worse. By the end of the day, his hair was askew, his look pained and his dreams of a peaceful coalition making hay while the sun is shining lay strewn around him.

Haq’s Monday blues came courtesy the Brothers Jatoi’s plan to move a resolution condemning the misbehaviour with MPA Arif Mustafa Jatoi in Friday’s melee.

Haq managed to negotiate with the NPP and the MQM, and the two parties kissed and made up after MQM’s Faisal Subzwari offered a contrite speech.

But Acting Speaker Shehla Raza followed up the happy speeches with an apology of her own to the assembly staff – singling out the employees at the control box – for what they had to face even though she was a ‘custodian’ of the house.

MQM’s Raza Haroon had had enough. “What are you apologising for? What happened to the staff and why are they complaining?” In a delayed reaction of sorts, Haroon decided to rebuke the speaker for having cited the MQM MPAs’ behaviour as a reason for adjourning Friday’s session.

“You cannot criticise a party by name,” Haroon said, as his party colleagues shouted ‘Shame’.

The defiant Raza doesn’t regret it one bit, she told The Express Tribune later. “This is not the first ruling where a political party has been mentioned by name. Perhaps I should have been stricter and this wouldn’t have happened,” she said. Raza also mentioned that for lesser offences, people have been told to not attend the assembly for seven to 15 days.

In the assembly, Raza plaintively asked what offence she had committed by apologising to her staff. “I’m trying to improve the environment as well,” she told Haq, when he muttered that her apology was ‘spoiling the mood’. “Do you want me to hold my ears and repent?” she asked.

Monday wasn’t good for spin doctors either. In her usual briefing to journalists after the session, Sindh Information Minister Shazia Marri said that “such things happen in a democracy. We’re not special.” As Raj, played by Shah Rukh Khan, said in the classic Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayeinge: “Bade bade deshon mai aisi choti choti baatein hoti rehti hain” (Such small things keep happening in big countries). The Sindh Assembly’s session will continue on Tuesday and the piqued and miffed MPAs will find new ways of channelling their outrage. Legislation, meaningful debate and action can wait another day.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 20^th, 2012.