Both the opposition PTI and the ruling coalition party PML-N’s ally PPP criticized the party’s ministers once more on Thursday for missing the National Assembly sessions.
Both opposition and Treasury members protested the lack of ministers during question hour in yesterday’s Lower House of Parliament session.
On behalf of the ministers, they had voiced their displeasure with a number of responses provided by parliamentary secretaries. The PPP members, who called it “an insult to the parliament,” made the loudest and most forceful protest in addition to the opposition members.
Syed Naveed Qamar of the PPP remembered that his party brought up the subject of ministers’ absences yesterday, shortly after the session started at 11 a.m.
The National Assembly is the collective accountability body for the cabinet. “Ministers have a constitutional obligation to attend the House,” Qamar stated.
They consistently disregard their duty to the National Assembly, despite the fact that there is no other duty that is more significant.
“This is absurd,” he said, adding, “how do they expect anybody—the opposition or anybody else—to respect parliament when its biggest beneficiaries choose not to respect it? They continue to abstain even though we are continuously bringing up this subject.
A “strict ruling” that the House should not move on until the ministers were present was then demanded by the PPP legislator from NA Deputy Speaker Ghulam Mustafa Shah.
The deputy speaker responded to Qamar by recalling that he had ruled yesterday that they would write to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to request that he guarantee ministers’ attendance for parliamentary proceedings.
He emphasized that in order to accommodate the arrival of ministers and parliamentary secretaries, the NA procedures had been halted for fifteen minutes earlier today. “If the government wants the House to continue in this way, it won’t happen because they are not serious.”
Omar Ayub Khan, the NA’s opposition leader, then spoke and criticized the ministers’ absence during question time.
“Take a look at the current circumstances. The time is 11:49 a.m. Even though we took a break, the minister wasn’t there. Here are the questions I have. Why have we arrived here? “Ayub said.”
“Is this a government or what?” he said, adding that there were just “one or two parliamentary secretaries” there instead of a minister or minister of state. They don’t take things seriously.
“This question hour is the only forum for government accountability,” the opposition leader emphasized. What governance and accountability do they have if they don’t take this seriously?
“This is a disgrace to the House,” he remarked, asking Speaker Ayaz Sadiq and the deputy speaker to make sure ministers were present.
Deputy Speaker Shah then declared: “We will not continue the House [proceedings] if the ministers do not come [to the NA] next week.” Do they want that? We’re going to accomplish this… The House is ashamed of this.
Another PPP lawmaker, Shazia Marri, brought up the similar point. She described yesterday’s guarantee from a minister on the subject as “very weak.”
“What has happened after yesterday is that that one minister is also absent now,” she joked, adding that rather than addressing the issue, they were discussing their performance.
Marri argued that federal and state ministers, not parliamentary secretaries, had a constitutional function. “The federal cabinet cannot be replaced by this.”
The deputy speaker then postponed the NA sessions until 11 a.m. tomorrow (Friday) and stated that they would write to PM Shehbaz about the issue today.
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