ISLAMABAD, February 8, 2019, 2019: The Provincial Assembly of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) witnessed introduction of two government bills in the House, observes Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN) in its Daily Factsheet on Friday.

Following are key observations of the House proceedings during second sitting of the fifth session:

Members’ Participation

• The Assembly met for an hour and 37 minutes.
• The sitting started at 1433 hours against the scheduled time of 1330 hours.
• The Deputy Speaker presided over the entire sitting in absence of the Speaker.
• The Leader of the House was absent while the Opposition Leader attended the entire proceedings.
• As many as 48 MPAs (39%) were present at the outset while 52 (42%) at the adjournment of the sitting.
• The parliamentary leaders of ANP and MMAP attended the proceedings.
• All three minority lawmakers attended the sitting.

Output

• The Minister for Law introduced two government bills including the KP Public Procurement Authority (Amendment) Bill, 2019 and the KP Public Procurement Authority (Second Amendment) Bill, 2019 in the House.

Representation and Responsiveness

• The government answered three out of 15 Starred Questions, three questions were lapsed due to participation of their respective movers in protest by the opposition on floor of the House while the remaining nine were not taken up. The lawmakers asked six supplementary questions as well.
• The Ministers for Local Government and Law responded to two Call Attention Notices (CANs) regarding interference of MNAs in the affairs of various local departments of Peshawar and steps to check the use of ice drug. These CANs were raised by lawmakers belonging to ANP and PML-N respectively.

Order and Institutionalization

• As many as eight lawmakers raised points of order consuming 20 minutes of the proceedings.
• The opposition lawmakers staged protest for ten minutes on floor of the House when the chair disallowed an ANP lawmaker to speak on a point of order.
• PML-N and PPPP lawmakers protested for two minutes before the Chair’s rostrum after exchange of heated arguments with government lawmakers on BRT project.
• The House was adjourned to meet again on Monday 11, 2019 at 1000 hours.

Transparency

• ‘Orders of the Day’ was available to the legislators, observers and others.
• The attendance of lawmakers was not available to the observers and media.

This daily factsheet is based on direct observation of the KP Assembly proceeding conducted by United Rural Development Organization (URDO) – a member organization of FAFEN. Errors and omissions are excepted