ISLAMABAD: Despite being convened on a specific two-point agenda, Tuesday’s thinly-attended sitting of the National Assembly eventually turned into a point-scoring match between opposition and treasury backbenchers with nearly all speakers dragging out skeletons from the other’s past.

The sitting was supposed to take up the impact of falling oil prices and the government’s decision to impose the Essential Services Maintenance Act on employees of the national flag carrier, but lawmakers ended up making ad hominem attacks on each other’s leaders, while maintaining the thin veneer of civility.

Initiating debate on the motion moved by Syed Naveed Qamar, Leader of the Opposition Syed Khursheed Shah fired the first salvos at the government when he gestured towards the treasury benches and said, “People come and go, and there are one or two here today. But what they tend to forget is that this seat is temporary.”

He decried government initiatives such as indirect taxes, gas cess and increased borrowing, saying that such measures were wreaking havoc in the lives of the common man. While quoting official figures on the economy to prove how the PML-N government had made things worse, he sarcastically remarked: “We hope that your revenue targets for this year will be met, thanks to all the ordinary people who will pay [indirect taxes] to cover your deficit.”

He also recalled the ‘Qarz Utaro Mulk Sawaro’ debt settlement scheme, initiated by a PML-N government in the 1990s. “Where did that money go? It will all come out eventually,” he said, pointedly.

He alleged that former chief justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry had deliberately acted as a spoiler when the PPP government was about to close an LNG deal with French investors, claiming that this was done at “Mian Sahib’s behest”. He criticised the former CJP and said that he was now a leader of his own political party but still used an official bulletproof vehicle.

He concluded by beseeching the prime minister to attend sessions of the house, saying, “We promise we won’t disrespect you.”

In his speech, PTI MNA Asad Umar refuted what he termed the “government’s misleading claims”, before launching his own attack on Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

Referring to the government’s claim that fuel prices in Pakistan were the lowest in the region, he said prices were lower in at least 71 countries; adding that in the immediate region, Nepal, Sri Lanka and India diesel price was less than in Pakistan.

He said that politicians whose cars ran on petrol didn’t care for diesel prices, nearly 90 per cent of which was taxes. “Buses, the poor man’s transport, use diesel; the poor shopkeeper who is forced to use generators because of endless loadshedding uses diesel,” he said.

He accused the government of being insensitive to KP, Sindh and South Punjab, saying, “The message they are sending is that electricity is only for places that voted for PML-N. Everyone else gets 18 hours of loadshedding.”

Talking about the suspension of Pakistan International Airlines’ (PIA) operations, he said that the way the government had bulldozed the PIA bill through the previous NA session indicated that it had mala fide intentions and complained that none of the recommendations made to a special committee on PIA were entertained by the government.

In his tirade on the Pakistan Steel Mills, he made an unusual suggestion when he proposed that the PM’s son, Hussain Nawaz, be entrusted control of the steel mills, since he was well-acquainted with both the local and international steel market. This proposal, albeit sarcastic, was greeted by jeers from the opposition benches, but confounded treasury members, who did not know how to respond.

MQM’s Farooq Sattar pointed out violations of the law and Constitution, allegedly committed by the federal government. “All regulators are powerless,” he said, adding that levying sales taxes on petroleum products negated the raison d’être of the Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority.

He pointed out that in the Sales Tax Act of 1990, changes to the tax can only be made in percentages, not by fixed amounts. He also said that the government was in violation of Article 162 of the Constitution, which dealt with prior sanction of the president to bills affecting taxation in the provinces.

Mr Sattar also read out a Supreme Court judgment in the 2009 Iqbal Zafar Jhagra case regarding oil pricing, which said that the executive could not levy new taxes without an act of parliament. “This is a participatory democracy, not a dictatorship,” he said, adding that now the time had come for the MQM to move the people’s court and bring their agitation out onto the streets.

But the government’s mood became clear when, rather than a member of the cabinet, Captain Mohammad Safdar rose to refute the opposition’s case.

Instead of attacking the substantive part of their speeches, Capt Safdar chose to criticise each opposition party in turn. Starting with the PPP, he recalled the Hamoodur Rehman Commission report and insinuated that it was responsible for dividing Pakistan.

He then went after the PTI’s performance in KP and accused them of executing underhanded deals with private companies. He also demanded a NAB probe into allegations against PTI leader Jahangir Tareen, and claimed that areas in KP where local governments were formed by other parties were being denied development funds.

RESIGNATION: National Assembly Speaker Ayaz Sadiq also announced that MQM MNA Rehan Hashmi, from NA-245 (Karachi-7), had resigned from parliament.

Published in Dawn, February 17th, 2016