KARACHI:
There was an air of doom and gloom in the Sindh Assembly on Thursday morning. The halls were deserted, almost as if there was no work to be done during the day.
And for the government, the day went from bad to worse.
A total of six MPAs – three of them ministers – from the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) sat and stared into space and at the glum Speaker Nisar Khuhro. Sindh Information Minister Shazia Marri stood to answer questions, a black armband a sign of her protest. Her colleagues sat quietly amid the empty benches. Save from the sound bites they had offered to reporters outside – ranging from “we expected justice” to “the court should not make judgments they later have to apologise for” – there wasn’t a peep on the prime minister being convicted of contempt by the Supreme Court until later on in the day.
Marri, and then Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ayaz Soomro, led the charge of defending the PPP and the prime minister, and showing what they really felt about the judiciary. Marri said that the judiciary was responsible for facilitating laws by dictators and that the prime minister was being punished for not violating the constitution. Soomro said that the judiciary had never accepted the PPP and the institutions had no respect for elected representatives.
Soomro noticeably played up the ‘Sindh card’, lamenting to Khuhro that constituents had asked if the president was being treated this way because he was a Sindhi. Marri even recalled her predecessor Sharjeel Inam Memon’s contentious speech in the assembly this week. “Perhaps he had pre-empted what would happen today,” she sighed.
Surprisingly enough, save for Marri, Soomro and Khuhro, the PPP had none of its vocal defenders in the assembly on Thursday. Surely, the party needs more people to offer speeches rife with accusations, challenges and notions of sacrifice.
But perhaps others felt they could show their loyalty by jetting off to Islamabad: among those missing in the assembly were Sindh Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah, Local Government Minister Agha Siraj Durrani and Deputy Speaker Shehla Raza. Even Khuhro felt the need to defend the party. “You and Marri spoke, otherwise I would have liked to say something too,” he told the law minister. Khuhro said that the judiciary had condoned four martial laws and apologised to the public.
His stance is a stark contrast to National Assembly Speaker Fehmida Mirza, who refuses to comment in public on the party because she would like to appear neutral.
Khuhro was in for a second shock on Thursday. MPA Marvi Rashidi looked frustrated when he wasn’t paying attention to what she was saying. “Can you pay attention please?” Rashidi asked. “I can’t, actually,” Khuhro said. “I have just learned that Malik Mohammad Khan has been killed in Lyari…. I hope it isn’t true.”
Marri scurried outside, but when she came back in, she nodded at Khuhro to confirm the news. And that reaction – far from the yelling and anger earlier in the day – was perhaps a sign that far from the madness in Islamabad, there are problems and people at home that desperately need attention.
Published in The Express Tribune, April 27th, 2012.
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