The opposition in the Punjab Assembly walked out of the house briefly against what it called non-serious attitude of the provincial government in handling the abduction of Shahbaz Taseer and objectionable remarks of Rana Sanaullah against President Asif Ali Zardari.
While members wasted another day in uttering personal and tit-for-tat remarks, two of the woman members, one each from the treasury and the opposition, almost came to blows over the delay in arresting the kidnapper of the slain governor’s son.
As soon as the proceedings started after a weekend break, PPP deputy parliamentary leader Shaukat Mehmood Basra took the floor to ask the law minister, Rana Sanaullah, to clarify in no uncertain terms as to whether “he (law minister) and Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif were involved in the abduction of Shahbaz Taseer.”
Rana, hardly known for taking such remarks lightly, after clarifying that both of them were certainly not involved in the abduction in any way, retorted: “Would the PPP like to clarify as to whether or not President Asif Ali Zaradari was involved in the murder of Benazir Bhutto.”
The PPP leader asked for a timeline for the recovery of Mr Taseer from the provincial law minister, who, in turn, wanted to know the timeframe for the arrest of murderers of the slain PPP minister Shahbaz Bhatti.
With personal allegation flowing from all sides, the PPP members maintained that Rana Sanaullah was known to have links with “militants”, who might have kidnapped Mr Taseer. They also claimed that the kidnapped young man could not be recovered as long as Sanaullah was holding the portfolio of law and parliamentary affairs.
Earlier, responding to a call attention notice by Mr. Basra, the law minister claimed that government was “closing in on Mr Taseer and his kidnappers, but details could not be made public at this moment for the safety of the abducted. A joint
team headed by the inspector-general of police was investigating the case and the Taseer family was on board.” He denied opposition’s allegation that the chief minister was not taking the matter seriously enough and said that Chief Minister Sharif was fully involved in the process and was keeping an eye on all developments. The chief minister would soon announce good news in the assembly in this regard, he added.
But, the assurance failed to pacify the opposition and they decided to walk out of the house. Just before the walkout, both sides kept up personal attacks, and two woman members – PPP’s Sajida Mir and PML-N’s Ghazala Raza Rana – almost came to blows over the kidnapping of Mr Taseer when some saner elements intervened to keep them apart. The speaker thought it wise to announce prayer’s break to let tempers cool on both sides.
As if all this was not enough, the Question Hour produced more non-seriousness when parliamentary secretary for local government, Abdur Razzaq Dhillon, was jointly accused by the treasury and the opposition of “furnishing fake, misleading and vague answers” to all questions relating to his department.
It may not be out of place to mention that the key department is without any minister and is being directly run by the chief minister, like many other major departments.
Initially, the speaker tried to rescue Mr. Dhillon but soon stopped as inarticulate and totally unprepared Dhillon ended up offending everyone in the house. He made a laughing stock of himself when, responding to a question from a treasury member (Ms. Anjum Safdar) about a stinking pond in the compound of Government Girls Primary School, UC-154, Faisalabad, the secretary said the department had contacted the local UC nazim for draining water only to be told that such councils had ceased to exit since long. The secretary took another embarrassing turn to say that the matter had been referred to the EDO, who had drained the water at a cost of Rs400,000. The member, however, insisted that she had met the EDO a day before but the EDO had mentioned nothing like that.
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