Taking stock of parliamentary performance

List of bills, CANs, questions asked in 13th NA reveal that govt, opposition kept raising wide range of issues.

Leaving out the macro issues, defined by the civil-military relations, significant for saving democracy from its own suicidal tendencies, it is important to delve on how to continue with little milestones which are important to consolidate democracy from within and might improve the civil-military equation. While the primary responsibility lies mainly with the PML-N, the largest parliamentary party, other parties can’t look away from past achievements. The outgoing National Assembly (NA) set the bar quite high if we look at important indicators and to match its performance is going to require a lot of maturity, perseverance and commitment.

Major indicators, for example, include formation of the parliamentary committees within the first few months of being sworn in Assembly. In the twelfth NA session from 2002-07, this happened in the last leg of its tenure while many of the committees were either not formed or remained non-functional throughout the tenure. Unfortunately, this trend continued in the Punjab Assembly under the thirteenth NA tenure from 2008 – 13. But in the NA session from 2008-13, we saw immense emphasis on the functioning of these committees. Over the five years, 45 standing committees held 915 meetings, 16 different kinds of committees held 105 meetings, while 60 sub-committees held 112 meetings. The opposition members chaired 40 per cent of the committees while the Public Accounts Committee was immediately formed and was chaired by the leader of opposition — an indicator that won Pakistan many points on the quality quotient of democracy.

The leader of the opposition could not be appointed in the twelfth NA until the third year of its tenure. The thirteenth NA, however, appointed its leader of opposition in the first month of being sworn in. On the legislation side, the thirteenth NA tenure stands out with impressive statistics for major indicators, vis-a-vis government and private member bills (PMBs), calling attention notices (CANs), questions and adjournment motions etc. A total of 222 government bills were introduced out of which, 115 were passed. A rare achievement was the passage of 19 PMBs out of the total 206 introduced. As opposed to this, the twelfth NA passed only one PMB.

Calling Attention Notices are an important tool for the members to raise important issues in the House. A total of 3,810 CANs were received, while the members made 467 statements on important issues. The list of bills, CANs and questions asked in thirteenth NA reveals that both the treasury and opposition benches kept raising a wide range of important issues affecting people’s lives. This might not have been acknowledged by the mainstream media but will go a long way in parliamentary history.

Another important step that the previous Assembly took was to provide women significant space to effectively play their role in legislative business. The House was presided over by a woman for the first time, who led it with proven leadership. The impact of this upon women’s status in the Assembly was immediately felt. Women were given due time on the floor to express and raise their concerns. Every committee had, at least, two to three women members, with women chairing many important committees.

An unprecedented development in Pakistan’s parliament was the establishment of Women’s Parliamentary Caucus in 2008. In its initial formative years, the Caucus was able to dent the statute by introducing approximately 30 bills on specific women and children issues and passed eight of them. It, however, still left much to be desired, especially on controversial issues like Blasphemy Laws and the Hudood Ordinances. It would be very damaging if the Caucus is not constituted and if women are not appointed to positions of authority and power.

These are a few of the milestones that the PML-N is now expected to not only reach but surpass.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 26^th, 2013.