Assembly diary: Opposition giving government tough time in ongoing assembly session

Three points of opposition’s eight-point agenda have been discussed so far.

PESHAWAR: The ongoing Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Assembly session, requisitioned by the opposition, has been a tough one for the provincial government which has been subjected to harsh criticism from the opposition benches.  

At the beginning of the session on February 18, the opposition comprising Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F), Qaumi Watan Party (QWP), Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and Awami National Party (ANP) submitted an eight-point agenda the lawmakers intended to discuss.

Law and order in the province, politically motivated formation of zakat committees, inequitable distribution of development funds among treasury and opposition lawmakers, the government’s failure to follow up on the education emergency, polio campaign, power outages, appointment of consultants for development projects, and political appointments in government departments were the issues the opposition lawmakers wanted discussed in the assembly.

The progress

As yet, the assembly has only managed to discuss three of these points, law and order, disproportionate allocation of development funds and zakat committee formations.

The debate on law and order remained the most important yet contentious discussion. On the first day of the session, PPP lawmaker Nighat Orakzai, on an adjournment motion, raised the issue of sexual harassment of female students in the University of Peshawar.

Lawmakers from both benches had a thorough discussion on the matter and Deputy Speaker Imtiaz Shahid Qureshi formed a committee headed by Adviser to the Chief Minister on Higher Education Mushtaq Ahmed Ghani to investigate the alleged harassment.

The agenda on the table

When opposition leaders were asked to begin the debate on law and order and they refused to do so by pointing out that Chief Minister (CM) Pervez Khattak, Home Secretary Akhtar Ali Shah and IGP Nasir Khan Durrani were not in attendance at the important session.

Speaker Asad Qaiser was left with no other option but to express displeasure at the bureaucracy for not coming to the assembly despite being informed of the session. However, the CM, IGP and home secretary made their appearances the next day.

Amid a flurry of speeches from both sides of the house, the law and order debate went on for two days. Senior minister Sirajul Haq criticised QWP lawmakers for staging a walkout after Speaker Qaiser did not allow QWP legislator Anisa Zeb Tahirkheli to explain a point, and termed their attitude “undemocratic”.

Fearing a possible adjournment due to a lack of quorum in the house, Haq said a meeting will be arranged between lawmakers, chief minister and law enforcement agencies to brief legislators on the situation. However, this meeting is yet to take place.

The debate on development funds began on February 24 and continued for two days. JUI-F’s Maulana Lutfur Rehman criticised the government for inequitable distribution of development funds. He said that treasury lawmakers were given Rs70 million and opposition lawmakers were only allocated Rs20 million.

Tahirkheli also pointed out that women lawmakers were being discriminated against as all of them have been given Rs10 million each while their male counterparts were allocated a larger sum. This debate was fraught with several tense moments, however, due to the treasury benches’ insistence the debate was quickly wrapped up.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 3^rd, 2014.