Senators praise Rabbani for upholding dignity of legislature

ISLAMABAD: Lawmakers showered praise on the Senate Chairman Mian Raza Rabbani for his consistent and prudent role in upholding dignity of the legislature, who in return credited all the lawmakers for the successes achieved under him in a Parliamentary year, which ended on Friday.

During several sittings, the House kept echoing with a demand by senators for a judicial investigation into the Army Public School Peshawar massacre and on the last sitting of the 126th session too, MQM’s Tahir Hussain Mashhadi and Ilyas Bilour of ANP again urged for judicial probe into the tragedy and said it was also a strong demand by the parents of the victims and even today they were holding protest in Peshawar.  

For the first time ever, the House also adopted a ‘Report to the People of Pakistan’ showcasing the performance of the Senate from March 12 last year to March 11, this year.The Senate, needless to say, has adopted a totally different outlook  and position in the two-chamber Parliament ever since PPP’s highly respected Mian Raza Rabbani was elected unopposed its chairman last year: be it the level and quality of debate, doing legislation or taking care of issues of public importance and of course observing punctuality.

The 225-page report with an attractively designed title page,touches upon legislative business,questions, motions, calling attention notices, periodical reports by ministers, matters of urgent public importance (zero hour), the committee of the whole, parliamentary outreach, Senate forum for policy research, public petitions, Senate’s website and many other works done during the year.

During the year,there were as many as 16 sessions, two joint sittings of the Parliament’s two chambers. Against mandatory 110 days, the House held 131 sittings. A total of 39 bills were passed by the Senate, of these 21 were moved by the government while the remaining 18 by the private members.

Over 500 points of public importance were raised by the senators and on 238, directions were issued by the chair while on over 100, the government responded. Delegations of academic institutions, including colleges and universities and colleges even from Bolan and other districts of Balochistan witnessed the Senate’s proceedings from the galleries.

PPP Senators Farhatullah Babar, Sehar Kamran, Mushahid Hussain Syed of PML-Q, Mushahid Ullah, Saleem Zia, Ghaus Bakhsh Niazi of PML-N, PTI’s Shibli Faraz, MQM’s Tahir Hussain Mashhadi, Mian Attique and PkMAP Senator Sardar Azam Musakhail spoke on the occasion and gave credit of the proactive role of the Senate to Rabbani.

However, Rabbani, in his remarks, thanked the senators and said that whatever decisions were taken these were in fact taken by the House Business Advisory Committee after the last year’s Senate election and hence this was the result of collective leadership and effort, including the Leader of the House, Leader of Opposition and all the senators.

“The Senate has performed keeping in view the concept of serving masses while strictly  abiding by the rules and regulations. I will continue defending dignity of the Senate and the Parliament,” he said.

Most interesting comments were made by Lt-Gen (R) Senator Salahuddin Tirmizi of PML-N, who said that he had been in the army but even there, he never experienced so much decorum and discipline, which he witnessed in the Senate.

“Had the Senate chairman been my senior in the army,life would have really tough for me,” he smilingly remarked. Sehar Kamran quipped that the Senate chairman ran the democratic House with military discipline.

Mashhadi was all praise for Rabbani but he could not help yet again calling on the government to ensure that the trickle down effect of cut in oil prices should reach the common man, which presently was not there.

Senator Mushahid Hussain saw record performance by the Senate under Rabbani. He used this opportunity to point out double standards in the approach of the British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond when he a few days back during a news conference here,advised Pakistan not to make Kashmir issue a precondition for talks with India. The senator asked why the West extend such advice to India, as Kashmir problem was part of the UN resolutions even today as the unresolved dispute.

Likewise, he noted US Secretary of State John Kerry urged Pakistan to limit its nuclear capability but no such words were used for India.