Ayaz Sadiq returns: NA likely to elect speaker on Monday

PTI alleges massive rigging in NA-122 by-elections

ISLAMABAD:

The schedule for electing a new speaker of the National Assembly was announced on Friday as the lower house’s former speaker, Ayaz Sadiq, returned to the parliamentary fold.

Sadiq, who had been de-seated by an election tribunal in August before winning his way back to the National Assembly in an October by-election, took oath as an MNA on Friday.

Following the oath taking, acting speaker Murtaza Javed Abbasi announced that secret balloting to elect a new speaker will take place on Monday.

While the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) is expected to nominate Sadiq as their candidate for the speaker’s slot, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) has nominated Shafqat Mehmood to contest Monday’s election. Lawmakers from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) have nominated GG Jamal as their candidate for the slot.

The main opposition in the house, the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), has decided to back the ruling party’s candidate. The Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), whose lawmakers returned to the assembly on Friday after withdrawing their resignations, announced that they will not be contesting the election.

With this support and the numbers that the PML-N already has in the lower house, Sadiq can expect a relatively easy election on Monday.

Overwhelming welcome

As a fresh session of the National Assembly commenced on Friday morning, all eyes turned to the door for Sadiq to walk through.

The former speaker, who arrived thirty minutes after members had assembled in the house, walked into the hall to an overwhelming welcome. Members of the ruling party accorded him similar treatment which they reserve for Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

Abbasi, the acting speaker, then bulldozed rules of the house to allow Sadiq to make a speech, despite protests from PTI’s parliamentary leader Shah Mehmood Qureshi. Qureshi charged the acting speaker of failing to stop people from disrupting the agenda just to receive Sadiq, before demanding that the day’s agenda should be limited to the election schedule for the new speaker.



“All allegations [of rigging] levelled against me from atop containers proved to be false,” he said while referring to the PTI’s four month long protest outside the Parliament.

With the air of a speaker of National Assembly about him, Sadiq slammed PTI chief Imran Khan for the language he had adopted against his rivals.

Commenting about the election tribunal’s decision to de-seat him on August 22 and his subsequent election through the NA-122 by-election on October 11, Sadiq said that the “court of the people” had given its verdict against the PTI.

“They [PTI] don’t have the courage to accept failure,” Sadiq asserted.

‘Sadiq returned through massive rigging’

Imran, who had skipped Friday’s National Assembly session, alleged that ‘massive rigging’ had taken place in the NA-122 by-elections on October 11 which saw Sadiq win and return to the assembly.

Addressing a news conference on Friday, the PTI chief claimed that PML-N had ejected as many as 21,000 voters from NA-122 in connivance with the National Database Regulatory Authority (NADRA).

Protest by Fata MNAs

Lawmakers from Fata staged a protest in the house against the ignorance shown by their fellow MNAs on the October 26 earthquake.

Leader of the opposition Syed Khursheed Shah failed to speak about the earthquake survivors despite being afforded two opportunities to speak on the floor.

Qureshi, whose party is in power in the quake-hit Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, insisted that any agenda should be suspended till a new speaker is elected.

Frustrated, MNAs from Fata tried to speak about the calamity on their own. But when they were denied permission to do so, they staged a protest in front of the speaker’s chair

Published in The Express Tribune, November 7^th, 2015.