When lawmakers violate rules

PESHAWAR: Lawmakers in the NWFP Assembly, who are supposed to do legislation and plan and approve development projects, are hardly following the set rules and regulations meant for smoothly conducting the assembly business.

Except a few, majority of the MPAs in the assembly are either unaware of the existing assembly procedures or deliberately avoiding the rules to create hurdles in the smooth functioning of the House.

The current provincial assembly is about to complete its parliamentary year next month, but probably it has not a single day to its credit when the session was started on its scheduled time and the members have followed the day agenda.

A member is supposed to speak on a ‘point of order’ when rules and regulations related to the assembly are being violated or a very important matter has to be raised however, in the assembly some of the MPAs think it as their constitutional right to say whatsoever comes to their mind on a ‘point of order’.

Similarly, in question-hour, a mover or other members have to add supplementary questions if they are not satisfied with the written replies related to a department’s performance, but it has become a routine in the assembly that most of the time has been spent on the already given answers, while sometimes irrelevant quarries are being asked from the ministers concerned.

Similarly a member starts lengthy debate on a call attention notice, which is supposed to just divert the attention of the treasury benches towards a problem or issue related to their constituency or other parts of the province.

On Wednesday, Mufti Kifayatullah of the Jamiat Ulema Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) was insisting on to add a supplementary query to a question that was declared lapsed by the speaker in the absence of Dr Zakirulla MPA, who was the mover of same question.

Despite the explanation by the Speaker and minister for parliamentary affairs, the JUI-F legislator succeeded in taking the floor by showing no respect to the rules of the House and ruling of the chair.

In another case, Zamin Khan of the PPP was asked the chair to explain the problem through his ‘calling attention notice’ instead of delivering a lengthy speech, however, as usual the MPA continued unabated. Even the Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Barrister Arshad Abdullah, who was responding to the queries related to Works and Services Department on behalf of the chief minister, made himself as a laughing stock when he wanted to refer a question to the committee about which the committee had already announced its recommendations.

An interesting situation developed when Mufti Kifayatullah and Ghulam Muhammad of the PML-Q suggested some amendments in the NWFP Sarhad Development Authority Mineral Wing Bill and were insisting that their proposed amendments were of most important nature. But they did not say ‘ayes’ when the Speaker put the amendments for knowing the opinion of the House. Perhaps they could not understand the English phrase “Those who are in favour of the amendments say ayes”.