Punjab Assembly: Owning the House and knowing it

The mood was relaxed. Smiles, handshakes and cheers were aplenty during the Monday session when the speaker and deputy speaker were elected through secret ballot.

The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz members are clearly still excited about the majority that they have been able to secure in the House. During the elections for the speaker, a smiling Rana Mashhood Ahmed, the former deputy speaker, was in the chair as members walked up the stairs on his left and right and went into the two polling booths set up in the space just behind the speaker’s chair to cast their votes for the new speaker.



Contesting were Rana Iqbal – the incumbent speaker – and the opposition’s nominee Raja Rashid Habib. Iqbal won by 262 votes.

While the members in the chambers below cast their votes, a private TV channel reporter said, “Run a beeper saying that Rana Muhammad Iqbal is leading the vote.” Not that there was any doubt about who would win the elections with the number of seats the PMLN has, but rules and decorum would have been better followed had the reporter waited until the counting of ballots began.

When the result was announced, a huge cheer erupted, followed by the PM-N supporters’ chants of “Sher” and “Dekho dekho kon aya”. This was the only time during the proceedings that women members of the PML-N were seen active. Led by Farzana Butt, a row of women members, shouted slogans in favour of their party at the top of their voices. The men did not join them and were satisfied with turning around and looking at their colleagues with an amused expression.

The former speaker seemed to be pleased about winning another term as incharge of the business of the House that in the last five years has seen its agenda being pushed into oblivion many times.



Peals of laughter erupted when Iqbal, either overly excited or a bit confused, repeated Mashhood’s congratulation to him at the end of his oath.

“My heartiest congratulations,” said Mashhood. Iqbal repeated the sentence without missing a beat.

Having won by 262 votes, Iqbal described the 35 votes cast against him as a “personal failure”. In his short address after being sworn in, he hoped that those who had voted against him would question their distrust of him once they saw how “impartial” he was while conducting the business of the House. He was not amused when an official reminded him during his speech that he had to oversee the deputy speaker’s election. “Let me finish what I have to say,” he said before calling members to vote for the deputy speaker.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 4^th, 2013.