KARACHI, April 7: The ugly incidents that took place on the floor of the Sindh Assembly on Monday and the subsequent boycott led by the Muttahida Qaumi Movement overshadowed the investiture of the new speaker and deputy speaker of the house as well as the election of leader of the house.
Apart from the obvious bad press generated by the attack on former chief minister and PML-Q Sindh chief Arbab Ghulam Rahim by unidentified persons inside the assembly hall and directly outside, the MQM’s boycott – the first of the newly-elected assembly – has seriously threatened to scuttle the nascent power-sharing deal between it and the Pakistan People’s Party.
Although the assembly proceedings were supposed to get under way at 9.30am, things did not get going till 12.30pm, with the recitation of the Holy Qur’an.
However, there were signs of trouble quite early in the day as despite the cancellation of all visitors’ passes – except for press passes – after Saturday’s session, a large number of people managed to make it to the galleries.
After 10am the jiyalas started trickling in, while at 10.30am Pir Mazharul Haq, the PPP’s leader of the parliamentary party, appealed to those in the galleries to maintain the decorum of the house. A few minutes later, now former speaker of the house Syed Muzaffar Hussain Shah inspected the galleries and looked quite displeased.
At 10.50am the first slogan of ‘Jeay Bhutto’ was raised, while at 11am the PPP’s MPAs started shuffling in. A second slogan was followed by an invasion of the speaker’s gallery by activists, who ploughed past assembly staffers. Soon chief minister-elect Syed Qaim Ali Shah and Nisar Ahmad Khuhro entered. Mr Khuhro also asked the visitors present to maintain calm.
Though the galleries were cleared a bit after several attempts, at 11.50am the sloganeering began in earnest, which attracted disapproving glares from some of the PPP MPAs. It appeared that the day’s session would be a repeat of Saturday, and the fears were not unfounded, as the crowd ignored the leaders’ requests.
The slogans – peppered with unparliamentarily language – were now echoing inside the hall, and a minor scuffle in one of the galleries involving a worked up jiyala started off a chain reaction of ugly events. The MQM members were conspicuous by their absence and the word round the press gallery was that they were seeking assurances that a repeat of Saturday’s abusive sloganeering would not occur.
An announcement over the PA system asking the slogan-chanting workers to calm down for Benazir Bhutto’s sake seemed to work momentarily, and the MQM contingent entered around 12.15pm, met with more slogans. Muttahida supporters in the galleries raised pro-Altaf Hussain slogans of their own, which led to a slogan-chanting competition between supporters of the PPP and MQM.
A few PPP workers were seen trying to calm down their worked up compatriots, but to little effect. Nisar Khuhro finally came on the mike and asked the party workers to refrain from sloganeering and applause. An MQM MPA also requested the removal of PPP posters held up by supporters in the galleries. Mr Khuhro once again asked his party’s supporters to refrain from displaying party paraphernalia inside the house, while adding that a “change in attitude” was required of the workers.
Eye of the storm
At 12.30pm Muzaffar Hussain Shah took the chair as speaker for the last time and the proceedings began with a recitation of the Holy Qur’an. It was after the recitation, during the na’at, when the melee erupted. Arbab Rahim had managed to make it into the assembly and in a near miss, escaped being hit by a flying shoe launched by a man in the Speaker’s Gallery.
A torrent of abuses poured in, aimed at the former chief minister of Sindh, while some people came to fisticuffs in the gallery. Pir Mazhar’s appeals to offer fateha for the Oct 18 and Dec 27 victims were drowned out, while the assembly Maulana had to be brought out, as the list of victims was read.
At 12.45pm fateha was finally offered, while during Arbab’s oath-taking cries of ‘shame’ reverberated within the hall. A roar erupted as he quickly left the hall after taking his oath. Following this nasty episode, the members paid glowing tribute to Muzaffar Hussain Shah, led by Nisar Khuhro. However, at around 1.30pm, MQM MPA Adil Siddiqui announced that his party was boycotting the proceedings in protest over the treatment meted out to Arbab Rahim. With this, the Muttahida’s members marched off.
Mr Khuhro condemned the manhandling of Arbab as well as the vengeance and prejudice that was being displayed. At 1.35pm Muzaffar Hussain Shah declared a 15-minute break, but the assembly did not reconvene till 2.45pm.
The remainder of the session got off to a hairy start, as a commotion erupted in the press gallery. The tributes to Muzaffar Hussain Shah continued, while in his final speech the outgoing speaker stressed the need for tolerance and reconciliation and praised Mr Khuhro as a “seasoned parliamentarian.”
He then asked Mr Khuhro to take the oath, and the new speaker took the chair at around 3.10pm. Mr Khuhro then administered the oath to the new Deputy Speaker, Syeda Shehla Raza.
A flood of congratulatory speeches followed, though a PPP MPA took a jab at the MQM, reminding the members of the manhandling of Younus Khan, a MQM-Haqiqi MPA, in 2002.
Interestingly, the man who had launched the shoe at Arbab and was thrown out was now back, sitting comfortably in the Speaker’s Gallery.
‘Let us run the house’
However Pir Mazhar, in an apparent damage control effort, said the essence of democracy was patience and tolerance and that nature would exact its revenge on Benazir Bhutto’s killers, just as it had on Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s killers. He said the spirit of reconciliation was inspired by Ms Bhutto herself and that he wished the MQM and other parties would have remained present.
He appealed to the party’s workers to “work with us and let us run the house,” adding that sloganeering wouldn’t help anyone. “We should forget the tradition of revenge and not victimize the opposition,” he pleaded.
The session was prorogued at 4.40pm and a special session, called to ascertain the leader of the house, began 6.25pm.
Following a recitation of the Qur’an and Na’at, a Vai of Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai was read, which moved many in the house to tears. The PPP’s minority MPA Saleem Khursheed Khokhar requested that the Christian ‘martyrs’ of Oct 18 also be recognized, which led to numerous MPAs requesting prayers for their ‘martyred’ and injured constituents.
After a break for Azan-i-Maghrib, fateha was offered for all the ‘martyrs.’
A somewhat terse exchange between Murad Ali Shah and Mr Khuhro followed over whether it was a special session or not. Following this, a motion was moved under Article 130 (2-A) of the constitution by Pir Mazhar and 18 others to ascertain whether Qaim Ali Shah commanded the confidence of the majority of the house.
The motion was passed unanimously by 90 members – 88 of the PPP and two of the ANP in the absence of all the other parties – as Qaim Ali Shah’s election was met with thunderous desk thumping and a shower of rose petals, following which the law-makers made a beeline for Mr Shah to congratulate him.
According to a source, after the special session, a meeting was held in the speaker’s chamber between chief minister-elect Qaim Ali Shah, the IG Sindh, CCPO, Zulfiqar Mirza and other PPP leaders, where reportedly, Mr Shah said security at the assembly was the caretaker government’s responsibility.
The source added that according to the PPP, talks with the MQM were continuing and there was no deadlock, saying that as per Dr Mirza, the MQM would attend the chief minister’s vote of confidence on Tuesday.
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