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ISLAMABAD – The government is facing a bit of trouble to smoothly run the proceedings of the National Assembly due to the strategy of the opposition to embarrass the government by disrupting the proceedings.
The joint opposition has deliberately been creating a mess during the proceedings of the lower house of the Parliament in different ways.
The best tool the opposition members have been practicing is pointing out lack of required strength with the onset of the proceedings. As per their strategy, the backbenchers from opposition point out insufficient strength in the house soon after the speech by the senior members from their side. The rest of the colleagues, avoiding to be counted in the house, rushed to leave the house.
The chair has no option but to suspend the proceedings due to unavailability of minimum [86 MNAs]. The most misused rule related to the quorum was actually designed to at least ensure 1/3 presence of the members in the house.
Interestingly, the opposition members deliberately leave the house and many of them are seen peeping from the entering gates during the counting of the MNAs to run the proceedings. Most of the time laughter and slogans are also heard when they succeed in suspending the proceedings.
The senior opposition in public speeches and TV shows often ask the government to take the parliament into confidence on important matters but during the proceedings they are never seen shy to force the chair for abruptly adjourning the proceedings. The lower house of the Parliament has recently witnessed a double hat-trick of suspending the house proceedings only because of quorum syndrome.
Background discussions with the senior members from treasury benches reveal that the government has planned to counter all the moves of the opposition over the special instructions. The treasury benches members would not only ensure maximum presence in the house but also straightforwardly give a response in the same tone over the criticism of the opposition members. The government members, as per the parliamentary sources, have prepared the long list of the wrongdoings, flaws, failures of the previous government [PML-N & PPP-P] to share in the house over the criticism of opposition members.
The senior members from the government benches would not hesitate to accept the challenge of initiating debate over any of the issues including inflation, increase in petroleum prices etc. Political and constitution experts viewed that the government had recently faced embarrassment for not smoothly running the parliament. It is not the only responsibility of the government to complete the required strength. Frequent misuse of the rule related to the quorum has become fun by the opposition members which is unfortunate, they remarked.
The opposition on the first day of the current National Assembly sitting asked for immediately holding a debate on price-hike but they did not stay in the house and prefer to leave after pointing out lack of required presence.
The opposition expressed concerns over the inflation and increasing prices of petroleum products in the country but did not bother to stay in the house to listen to the arguments from treasury benches.
It was also seen in the last sitting of the national assembly that a senior parliamentarian Khawaja Muhammad Asif, on the behalf of the opposition, was interested to know the secret agreement between the government and the opposition but not convince his colleagues to stay in the house to listen the government response.