House Leaves Most of Agenda Unaddressed

ISLAMABAD, January 17, 2012: The National Assembly met for an hour and one minute during the fourth sitting on Tuesday.

The sitting, which started 19 minutes late, witnessed low attendance of Members. Only 61 Legislators were present at the start and 97 when the sitting was adjourned. The Agenda for the sitting was set ambitiously, as the House left most of the 45 items on the Orders of the Day unaddressed.

Members raised a total of 14 Points of Order consuming 49% of the sitting time. However, none of the Points of Order attracted the Chair’s formal ruling.

The Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and none of the parliamentary leaders attended the sitting.

Members’ participation in House proceedings

• The National Assembly met for an hour and one minute.
• Instead of the scheduled starting time of 1100 hours, the sitting started at 1119 hours. The proceedings started late by 19 minutes.
• The Deputy Speaker chaired the sitting for 41 minutes, while the remaining time was presided over by the Panel of Chairpersons.
• The Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition were not present.
• All the Parliamentary Leaders were absent.
• The Chief Whips of MQM and PPPP were present, while the chief whips of PML, ANP, PMLN, MMAP and PMLF were absent.
• Sixty one Members (18%) were present at the start and 97 Members (28%) at the end of the sitting.
• One Member applied for leave to be absent from the sitting.
• Nine minority Members were present during the sitting.

Representation and Responsiveness

• The House took up one out of two Calling Attention Notices (CANs) which appeared on the Orders of the Day.
• Moved by five PPPP Members – two females and three males – the CAN was about “issuance of machine readable passport to its citizens for a period of five years instead of ten years creating difficulties for Pakistanis abroad”, which was directed to the Ministry of Interior.

Output

• Twelve out of 16 Bills, including The Constitution (Twentieth Amendment) Bill, 2012] (Amendments of Articles 1, 51, 106 and 239, were taken up and sent to respective Standing Committees.
• A report of the Standing Committee on Inter Provincial Coordination on the Bill further to amend the Medical and Dental Council Ordinance, 1962 [The Medical and Dental Council (Amendment) Bill, 2009] was presented in the House.

Order and institutionalization

• Fourteen Points of Order consumed 30 minutes (49%) of the sitting. However, none of the Points of Order attracted the Chair’s formal ruling.
• Five Resolutions which appeared on the Orders of the Day were not taken up.
• Four Motions under Rule 259 were not taken up by the House.
• There were no instances of protests, boycotts or walkouts during the sitting.

Transparency

• Orders of the Day were available to Legislators, observers and others.
• Information on Members’ attendance was unavailable to observers and the public.
• The Quorum was visibly lacking at various stages of the sitting. However, it was not pointed out by any of the Legislators.

The Daily Factsheet is based on direct observation of National Assembly proceedings conducted by Centre for Peace and Development Initiatives (CPDI), a Member organization of FAFEN.