PTI lawmakers face hostility on return to PA

Karachi
Seven months after they had tendered their resignations on the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf leadership’s instructions, the four MPAs of the party in Sindh found a hostile lot awaiting them on their return to the provincial assembly on Monday.
Amid heated arguments, the opposition lawmakers staged three walkouts and raised questions over the legal status of the PTI MPAs’ resignations.
With the exception of Khyber Pakthunkhwa where the PTI is in power, the party’s lawmakers in other provinces and the Centre had resigned en masse last year.
Now they have returned to the assemblies after the PTI and the government reached an agreement to form a judicial commission to probe the allegations of rigging during the 2013 elections.
The first walkout was a token one staged by the Muttahida Qaumi Movement and it lasted 30 minutes. The MQM lawmakers were irked when speaker Agha Siraj Khan Durrani prohibited them from raising the issue of the Rangers raid on their headquarters, Nine Zero, in Azizabad on March 11.
MQM legislators Muhammad Hussain and Syed Sardar Ahmed told the House that the party activists arrested in the raid were not being allowed to meet their families.
The speaker suggested that the MQM lawmakers should approach the courts to sort out the problem.
Durrani said he himself had spent time in jail and knew the process through which a family could meet its imprisoned relative.
Later, MQM’s Muhammad Hussain had a heated argument with deputy speaker Syeda Shehla Raza, who was chairing the session at that time, on the issue of the status of PTI lawmakers’ resignation and it turned so intense that the proceedings had to be adjourned for 10 minutes.
The PTI lawmakers had tendered their resignations on September 1, 2014. A controversy regarding the resignations had emerged on January 21 at the outset of a new session of provincial assembly when Durrani announced that he was accepting the resignations of opposition legislators and sending them to the election commission.
The announcement came at a crucial time as the elections for 11 Senate from Sindh were scheduled to take place in March and accepting the resignations of the four lawmakers could have turned the tide in favour of the ruling Pakistan People’s Party in the polls.
As the election commission had not received the accepted resignations, the status of the four opposition legislators, as to whether they were still MPAs or not, remained unclear.
The MQM lawmaker repeatedly raised the issue in the House, but the deputy speaker gave the ruling that the PTI legislators were still members of the assembly as there had been no notification issued about the acceptance of their resignations.
The deputy speaker while giving her ruling also reprimanded the MQM lawmaker for raising the issue out of turn.
“I am bound to conduct the proceedings of the House according to rules and procedures of the assembly. The assembly cannot be run in accordance with whims and wishes of protesting lawmakers,” she said.
The deputy speaker also told the MQM lawmakers that because of their undue insistence on raising the issue of the resignations, the time allocated for taking up the legislators’ questions in the form of call-attention notices had been wasted.
Earlier, the four lawmakers of the PTI, Samar Ali Khan, Khurrum Sher Zaman, Syed Hafeezuddin and Dr Seema Zia; were welcomed at the outset of proceedings by Durrani. The speaker said the returning lawmakers would serve the people in their respective areas and also strive for the betterment of the province.
He also praised the role of former president and PPP co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari in strengthening the democratic system during the PTI’s protest movement.
Responding to the welcoming remarks, Samar Ali Khan said his party had been on a mission to strengthen democracy and lawmakers of the party had returned to the assemblies for the same cause.
Later, the Pakistan Muslim League-Functional and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz lawmakers staged a walkout, led opposition by leader Muhammad Shaharyar Khan Mahar, as they were not allowed to raise the issue of the delay in the procurement of wheat that was causing a financial setback the farmers.
The opposition lawmakers wanted Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah, who was present in the House at that time, to speak on the issue as he holds the additional portfolio of the food department.
Then the MQM, the PML-F and the PML-N lawmakers collectively staged a walkout vociferously protesting against the “abrupt ending of the call-attention notices portion of the proceedings by the chair, as four of the five questions asked by the opposition MPAs remained unanswered.
The only call-attention notice taken up during the proceedings related to query raised by MQM MPA Waqar Hussain Shah about the persistent presence of encroachments under the Quaidabad flyover in Karachi.
Local government minister Sharjeel Inam Memon responded that 60 percent of the encroachments beneath the flyover had been cleared, while rest would be removed by the end of the current month.
Before staging the third walkout, PML-F and PML-N lawmakers surrounded the rostrum of the speaker, shouted slogans against the chair and treasury benches and tore their personal copies of the “Rules of procedure” of the assembly booklet.
After the third walkout, the speaker remarked that the opposition lawmakers had disgraced the constitution and the provincial legislature by tearing the booklets of the Rules of procedure.
The speaker suggested that disciplinary action should be taken against the opposition lawmakers who tore the booklets by a passing a censure motion on the issue. The speaker also noted that Shaharyar Khan Mahar had some personal grudge against him.
Earlier, the House, through a majority vote, passed into law the “Sindh Commission on the Status of Women Bill, 2015”.
Parliamentary affairs minister Dr Sikandar Ali Mandhro said the bill was aimed at ensuring all constitutionally guaranteed rights and privileges to women irrespective of their communal and religious affiliations.
Later, the House, sans the opposition-, also passed a resolution paying tributes to the services of former prime minister and PPP founder, the later Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, in connection with his 36th death anniversary on April 4.