The 64-year-old history of manhandling assembly speakers, deputy speakers

LAHORE: The current Punjab Assembly Deputy Speaker, Dost Muhammad Mazari, is not the first presiding officer in the country’s legislative history who has been physically manhandled by a rowdy mob of fellow legislators.

In fact, Pakistan’s parliamentary history is littered with incidents ranging from verbal spats and brawls to scuffles and other modes of physical abuse, research shows. On September 23, 1958 when a pandemonium in the East Pakistan Assembly had turned into a battlefield, a paper weight was thrown at the-then Deputy Speaker, Shahed Ali Patwary, resulting in fatal head injuries.

Elected in 1955, Shahed Ali (1899-1958) had succumbed to his wounds just four days later. He was presiding over a session where the Awami League had tabled a motion, whereby it wanted the sitting Speaker to be declared insane.

Suddenly, members of the legislative house had ignited a fight and started grappling with one another. Many historians are of the view that this incident had actually formed the basis of October 7, 1958 Martial Law imposed by the-then President Iskander Mirza, and one of the reasons cited by the-then Army Chief, Ayub Khan, to be behind the extreme step.

(References: The Banglapedia: National Encyclopedia of Bangladesh and the Asiatic Society of Bangladesh) Not long ago, on February 4, 2021, lawmakers in the current Pakistani National Assembly had hurled abuses at each other.

The ruckus and mayhem had started when PPP’s Naveed Qamar had rushed to Deputy Speaker, Qasim Suri, after he gave the floor to three federal ministers – Shah Mahmood Qureshi, Fawad Chaudhry and Asad Umar – one after another without giving a chance to the opposition members to voice their opinions.

On February 8, 2021, days after a few infuriated lawmakers had wrestled in the lower house of the parliament, the-then Speaker, Asad Qaiser, had issued notices under Rule 21 of the Rules of Procedure and Conduct of Business in the National Assembly 2007 to Pakistan People’s Party (PPP)’s Syed Naveed Qamar, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz’s Chaudhry Hamid Hameed and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s Attaullah, and had sought an explanation from them for violating the decorum of the house by spewing a nonstop torrent of the most un-parliamentary language ever witnessed.

On April 20, 2021, members of the-then sitting PTI government had denounced the disorderly behaviour of PMLN’s Shahid Khaqan Abbasi for threatening to hit the-then National Assembly Speaker, Asad Qaiser, with his shoe after the two had exchanged harsh words.

Amidst soaring political temperatures, the government of the time had presented a resolution to debate the expulsion of the French ambassador — one of the key demands of the proscribed Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan-- which had staged violent protests across the country for several days.