Fairly a large number of very experienced parliamentarians sit on the opposition benches these days and thanks to the pull of Imran Khan, a big crowd of spirited first-timers is present there as well. But none of them is yet able to imagine and execute any coordinated moves to embarrass the government during the ongoing budget session. The whole scene rather appears too hunky-dory, mostly inducing yawns with insipid conduct of the opposition.
On Wednesday, the budget-debate reached the stage where you have all the possibilities to expose and discuss the faulty performance of specific ministries by resisting the financial allocations that they had demanded for the next fiscal year. In the name of ‘cut motions,’ the opposition had a perfect and legitimate opportunity to tell its stories with some vigour. Sadly, not one opposition member cared to take full advantage of this opportunity.
Sheikh Rashid Ahmad proved a huge disappointment in this context. Instead of focusing on one or two sensational stories related to a definite organization, he tried to discuss all issues under the sun in a desultory manner. Doing this, he mostly repeated words and jargons that he frequently uses in his non-stop one on one interviews with various 24/7 channels.
Jamshed Dasti, the self-styled ‘voice of the poor’, was equally disappointing. One thing was obvious, though. After failing to stir a huge scandal by dubbing the parliamentary lodges “dens of vice,” he now acts tamed. Who had managed taming of the shrew remains the question, though.
Shah Mehmood Qureshi and Javed Hashmi should have guided their youthful lot to mark their presence by actively participating in the business of cut motions. Both of them are prisoners of their mountain-size egos and always prefer to fly solo.
Pakistan Peoples Party should have taken full advantage of the obvious vacuum, therefore. It is true that its benches have highly experienced politicians. But most of them were never known for actively participating in parliamentary business. Syed Khurshid Shah, the opposition leader, is indeed matchless when it comes to cutting backroom deals and forging consensus with the rest of opposition members. But that’s about it.
Due to its association with iconic Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan Peoples Party is lucky for having some hardworking women members of parliament. It has a towering person like Dr Fehmida Mirza, who has been returning to the national assembly since the early 1990s by contesting vicious battles of a direct election for a seat of Badin. She had been an elegant Speaker of the previous assembly as well.
Dr Azra Pecheho and Ms Nafisa Shah studiously prepare themselves for parliamentary business. In this assembly, the PPP also has Ms Shazia Marri. Although first coming to this house on a seat reserved for women nominee of a political party, she eventually won a hardly contested direct election on a seat in feudal-dominated and relatively conservative Sanghar. She has presence and is highly articulate as well.
I sincerely believe that Syed Khurshid Shah should have outsourced the business of dealing with cut motions, exclusively to the group comprising Dr Mirza, Nafisa Shah, Dr Azra and Ms Shazia Marri. But they are being recklessly wasted by speaking briefly regarding some ministries and thus fail to live up to their potential.
What disappoints me most is the inability of this assembly to find out for us as to what had happened to the much-trumpeted national security policy that the third Nawaz government boasted to have introduced in this country with the intent of taking full command and control of things ‘strategic’ in Pakistan.
With vigilant reading of funds allocated for the interior and the foreign ministry, they could have easily found out that sufficient money had not been committed for establishing a full-fledged secretariat to deal with issues related to national security. It was in this secretariat that input from all intelligence-gathering agencies was promised to collate for dispassionate analysis, plus the stream of policy proposals, with the idea to equip and empower elected civilians to lead various outfits of national security.
No wonder, Nawaz Sharif just stands up one day in the national assembly to simply tell us that operation ‘Zarb-e-Azb’ has been launched through one of the briefest speeches of his long political career.
Published in The Express Tribune, June 19th, 2014.
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The writer's first sentence needs to be corrected. The word "approve" should be replaced either by "approving" or by "the approval of".