ISLAMABAD, April 19, 2013: The Senate’s fourth sitting of the 92nd session, which met for an hour and 15 minutes, unanimously adopted a resolution demanding to try former President Gen. (R) Pervez Musharraf under article 6 of the constitution for abrogating the constitution.

The resolution also demanded that all photographs, posters and banners of the former president be removed from all government buildings with immediate effect.

On an adjournment motion, the house continued to debate the issue of power outages. The Question Hour was not held. Only the parliamentary leader of ANP attended the sitting as only six senators were present at the outset while 14 were there at the time of adjournment.

The second quarterly report on the state of Pakistan’s economy for 2012-13 and a report of the Standing Committee on Defence and Defence Production were presented in the house.

Following are some key observations of the parliamentary business:

Members’ Participation in House Proceedings

• Senate met for an hour and 15 minutes.
• The sitting started at 1110 hours against the scheduled starting time of 1000 hours, witnessing a delay of an hour and 10 minutes.
• The Chairman chaired the sitting.
• The parliamentary leaders of only ANP attended the sitting while those of NP, JUIF, PML, BNPA, PMLF, and MQM were absent.
• Only six senators were present at the outset while 14 were there at the time of adjournment. A maximum of 25 senators (24% of the total membership) were observed to be present at one point of sitting.
• One of the four minority Senators attended the sitting.
• Five Senators applied for leave.

 Representation and Responsiveness

• The Question hour was deferred.
• The house resumed discussion on power outages as the issue was raised through an adjournment motion in the previous sitting.

Output

• The house unanimously adopted a resolution calling upon to try former military ruler Gen (r) Pervez Musharraf under Article 6 of the Constitution for derailing democracy and abrogating the constitution. The resolution also demanded that all photographs, posters and banners of the former president be removed from all government buildings with immediate effect.

• The Standing Committee on Defence and Defence Production presented its report in the house. It was about the visit of National Security and Foreign Policy Committee of Iran’s Consultative Assembly and visits to Naval and Air Headquarters.
• The second quarterly report on the state of Pakistan’s economy for the year 2012-13 was also laid before the house.

Order and Institutionalization

• Nine points of order consumed 35 minutes of the sitting time. None of the points of order attracted the Chair’s formal ruling.

Transparency

• ‘Orders of the Day’ was available to the legislators, observers and others.
• Information on senators’ 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 the Senate proceedings conducted by Centre for Peace and Development Initiatives (CPDI), a member organization of FAFEN