Poor attendance: Lack of quorum bequeaths fruitless assembly session

Only 21 members attend proceedings as speakers adjourns session till Thursday

PESHAWAR:

Monday’s proceedings of the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Assembly were just 12-minutes-old when they had to be adjourned due to a lack of quorum.

The session started at 3:50pm, about two hours behind schedule, with just a handful of lawmakers present in the house. Speaker Asad Qaiser proceeded with question hour; however, the absence of members also shortened this segment of the session.

Of the 15 questions on the day’s agenda, only one was answered, while 12 others lapsed due to the absence of their movers. Meanwhile, two were deferred on the request of Adviser to Chief Minister Amjad Afridi.



Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) lawmaker from Hangu, Mufti Syed Janan, asked the speaker to do something about the poor attendance. Janan said although the session began two hours late, the hall was still empty. “The session should either start at 4pm or the speaker should do something about members’ attendance,” he stressed.

The house also failed to take up two calling to attention notices due to the absence of their movers. Speaker Asad Qaiser moved onto the next item on the agenda, the passing of two bills. However, when the minister for law asked the house to take the legislation into consideration, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) dissident MPA Javed Nasim pointed towards the lack of quorum.

The speaker tried to continue with the session and pretended to ignore Nasim. However, murmurings among the handful of MPAs forced him to go for a count.

It was determined that there were 21 lawmakers present, upon which the speaker ordered the bells of the assembly to be rung for two minutes. However, since nobody else turned up, Qaiser was forced to adjourn the session till Thursday afternoon. Interestingly, around 20 lawmakers also applied for leave.

The apparent lack of interest from both treasury and opposition lawmakers has seen the current session enter its sixth month. Hours have been wasted on delayed starts and lengthy breaks. However, neither the opposition nor the treasury seems to be paying any attention to the financial impact of such wasted sessions.

Dozens of policemen are deployed for every session and some personnel are even stationed on the rooftops of the nearby residential flats of the Lady Reading Hospital (LRH) as well as the Malik Saad and Mufti Mehmood flyovers.

In addition, a huge amount of money and physical effort goes into printing agenda, bills, questions, adjournment motions, calling to attention notices, privilege motions and other documents. All this is in addition to the cost of refreshments.

The K-P Assembly’s current session has been ongoing since October 23, 2014 due to the reported wrangling over the election of a deputy speaker. The former deputy speaker Imtiaz Shahid Quershi resigned from his post in October, however, his seat could not be filled as three aspirants from the ruling PTI are vying for the position.

As the party has failed to reach a consensus within its own ranks, the session has been unnecessarily prolonged to avoid any violation of rules by not electing a deputy speaker.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 14^th, 2015.