Selection of chairman of Senate committees

Divided opposition bags more positions than ruling coalition

By Tariq Butt

ISLAMABAD: Even the divided opposition in the Senate has succeeded in clinching more positions of chairmen of parliamentary committees than the ruling alliance on the basis of its numerical strength.

The advantage of four posts of chairmen by the opposition clearly shows that it is in a majority in the Upper House of Parliament, even though it had failed to get its Senate chief elected in March this year.

The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf-led governing coalition has bagged 16 positions of chairmen while the opposition parties have clinched 22 posts.

The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PMLN) and its allies, which enjoy the support of 27 senators, have secured 10 posts while the Pakistan People’s Party-led coalition has got 12 berths.

The PMLN and the parties associated with it on the opposition benches include the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUIF), the National Party, Prof Sajid Mir’s Jamiat Ahl-e-Hadith and the Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party (PkMAP). Of them, the PMLN was allocated four positions, the JUIF two while the others got one each.

The PPP apportioned these offices between its own members and a faction of the Balochistan Awami Party (BAP) — the Dilawar group and independents — that voted for Yousuf Raza Gilani in his election as the leader of the opposition as against the PMLN nominee.

“The agreed formula was that a parliamentary party would get one post of committee chairman for every three members,” PML-N Senator Irfan Siddiqui told The News when contacted. He confirmed that although the opposition parties were divided between two groups led by the PMLN and PPP, they bagged the positions of the chairmen of the House committees as per their overall numerical strength.

On the demand of JUIF chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman, Senator Talha Mahmood was made chairman of the standing committee on finance.

Siddiqui said that after the issuance of notifications of the newly selected chairmen, the committees would become functional. “The opposition would as usual play a forceful role as per the Senate traditions.”

The nomination of the new chairman for the committee on human rights evoked more controversy and interest than any other selection.

PPP Senator Mustafa Nawaz Khokhar had ably led this committee but this time his party did not want him to head it. Instead, it asked the PMLN to name someone for the position. However, the senator nominated by the PMLN was not interested in the post. Finally, the office went to the government.

Khokhar, who acted as the spokesman for the PPP chairman for years and used to defend the party in current affairs programmes on TV, has disappeared from screens for many weeks now, which shows he had distanced himself from his assignment.

Responding to his party leader Senator Sherry Rehman’s tweet, Khokhar tweeted that the standing committees are dependent on the existence of a ministry (division). No ministry means no committee. The HR ministry on a few occasions in the past had been merged with the law ministry. To avoid this, former senators Farhatullah Babar and Afrasiab Khattak had led the effort to turn it into a functional committee so that the HR committee never ceases to exist.

Sherry Rehman had tweeted that the human rights committee was made a standing committee because it is more powerful than a functional committee (which has no ministry) and the PPP did not trade it for defence. “For us it’s the most important committee. It went to PMLN and they made that choice. You ran HR well for the party”, Sherry had responded to Khokhar.

Before that, Khokhar had tweeted that on the first working day of the Senate, among the top of the agenda items for the day was to clip the wings of the HR committee. To turn it into a standing committee from a functional. Khokhar stood up and protested but the “silence from the front rows was deafening!”

Despite the fact that both the opposition groups got their due representation on the basis of their numerical strength, the acrimony that was caused due to the election of the opposition leader continues.

“We had been formally called by the Senate chairman to attend a meeting between the opposition leader and the government side a few weeks back to discuss the composition of the new parliamentary committees. But we were not allowed to participate in it on the argument that the PMLN would be consulted later, Siddiqui said.

“We had made it clear that we would not allow any deals to materialise at our cost.”