ISLAMABAD, April 25, 2019: The National Assembly passed the Elections (Amendment) Bill, 2019 on Thursday while leaving two thirds agenda unaddressed, observes Free and Fair Election (FAFEN) in its Daily Factsheet.

Following are key observations of the proceedings during fourth sitting of the ninth session:

Members’ Participation

• The House met for an hour and 29 minutes.
• The proceedings started at 1113 hours against the scheduled time of 1100 hours.
• The Speaker presided over the sitting for 46 minutes while the Deputy Speaker chaired the rest of the sitting.
• The Leaders of the House and the Opposition did not attend the sitting.
• As many as 51 lawmakers (15%) were present at the outset and 152 (44%) at the adjournment of the sitting.
• The parliamentary leaders of BNP, GDA, PPPP and MMAP attended the sitting.
• As many as seven out of 10 minority lawmakers were present.

Output 

• Moved by the Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs, the House passed the Elections (Amendment) Bill, 2019. The bill provides for grouping two or more non-contiguous Frontier Regions of erstwhile Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in to a constituency.

Representation and Responsiveness

• The House did not take up two Calling Attention Notices, Motion under Rule 259 and Motion of Thanks to the President for his address to the Parliament.
• The House took up eight out of 38 Starred Questions addressed to the ministries of Law and Justice, Communications and Postal Services. Of the remaining, 18 questions were deferred, three lapsed due to absence of movers, one was not answered by the government and eight were not taken up by the House. The lawmakers also asked 14 supplementary questions.

Order and Institutionalization

• A PPP lawmaker raised a Point of Order consuming nine minutes.
• PPPP lawmakers protested during the proceedings for eight minutes when the Chair refused their request to raise on Points of Order.
• The House was adjourned to meet again on April 26, 2019 (Friday) at 1030 hours.

Transparency

• ‘Orders of the Day’ was available to the legislators, observers and public.
• Attendance of lawmakers was available to the media and observers.

This daily factsheet is based on direct observation of the National Assembly’s proceedings, conducted by the Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN). Errors and omissions are excepted