The BackBencher: If The Godfather was Pakistani, he would be an MPA

KARACHI:

The MPAs, sometimes, behave like characters out of Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather. Their suits are sharp, the reverence is overstated and the pleasantries last for an eternity.

If they spent half as much time passing resolutions and actually discussing a pressing issue, maybe, just maybe, something could have been done about the province's law and order situation.

On Tuesday, the session took forever to start. The speaker's helpers were placing HB2 pencils on the agendas for the opposition benches so the paperwork would stay put.

Murad Ali Shah was one of the early arrivals. He wore yet another bold custom-made suit with a deep purple jacket and salmon pink pants.

MPAs kept strolling in as the clock above the speaker's chair kept ticking and at 11:30am, the session came to order. The attendance was low and many from the opposition were carrying the morning papers with them.

Deputy speaker Shehla Raza was chairing the session and she had her game face on. She was ready to discipline any MPA who would create a scene. No one speaks out of turn when Raza is in chair. The MPAs have to raise their hands and wait for the deputy speaker to call out their name. If an MPA does misbehave, Raza gives them an earful.

This session was all about a little TLC - tenders, labour and contracts.  Representing the labour department was the minister for parliamentary affairs, Sikandar Mandhro. He had come prepared to answer some loaded questions. An MPA asked about child labour policies while another asked about what was being done to the apartments and homes in the labourers colony.

Muttahida Qaumi Movement's Naheed Begum and Waqar Hussain Shah, Pakistan Peoples Party's Khairunissa Mughal, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf's (PTI) Seema Zia and Khurram Sher Zaman asked questions about how the workers got apartments in the colony, what was the down payment, how they were registered and how much of the taxpayers money was being used…and wasted.

The minister would sometimes respond with 'answer maybe taken as read' and at other times give a detailed response complete with a financial breakdown.

Get a room

With the question-and-answer session finished quickly, the deputy speaker moved on to PTI's privilege motion for a room in the assembly building. Raza told Zaman that she had given directives and the party would have their room at the assembly soon.

The MPAs chimed 'aye aye' in favour of a motion set forward by Nisar Khuhro on load-shedding in the province. The MQM also put forward a motion where the leader of the opposition stood up and made an impassioned speech about the current law and order situation.

The deputy speaker kept saying that she wanted to get as much done during the session as possible. And she did.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 26^th, 2014.