ISLAMABAD: The Presidency has rejected a long pending plea of the National Assembly to uphold its ‘privilege’ to deny public access to the attendance record of its members.

The National Assembly Secretariat had made the plea in October 2013 after the Federal Ombudsman upheld the right of Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency (Pildat) to seek the record which the Secretariat had denied to the think tank, claiming that sharing the information will “breach the privilege of MNAs”.

Last Monday, the director legal of the president’s secretariat rejected the contention. It noted that the attendance records of MNAs are “not private or personal in nature” but are “in public domain”.

“It will not be democratic to deny this information to the people,” said the order dated July 6.

It will certainly be interesting to watch the response of the NA secretariat to the presidential order which requires it to provide the think tank the information within 15 days.

Read more: President greeted by ‘chirping crickets’ in National Assembly

In its plea to the presidency, the National Assembly secretariat cited the Articles 66, 67 of the constitution about the MNAs’ privileges and their rights to frame rules for the conduct of their business in the house.

But in its July 6 order, the president secretariat held that Article 66 primarily gives immunity and privileges to a parliamentarian for speeches on the floor of the House and that Article 67 pertains to framing the Rules of Procedure with regard to proceedings in the House.

“Rules 28 and 283 of the Assembly Rules do not apply at all in view of Article 19-A of the Constitution of Pakistan, which significantly supplements the Information Law,” it observed.

Moreover, it said the other reasons for not accepting the stance of the National Assembly Secretariat are that “it is a matter of record that proceedings of the National Assembly is televised on electronic media” and Rule 282 of the Assembly Rule 2007 also requires the secretary of the National Assembly Secretariat “to prepare a full report of the proceedings at each of the sittings and to publish the same, meaning thereby, that all the information available with documents and record maintained at the Agency [National Assembly Secretariat] is not confidential and secret”.

Pildat chief Ahmad Bilal Mehboob locked horns with the National Assembly the issue in March 2013 when he sought the complete record of attendance of each member of the National Assembly for the 2008-2013 term. When the Assembly secretariat declined the information, Pildat invoked the Freedom of Information Ordinance, 2002.

Again the request was turned down, but this time the argument offered was that the attendance record of MNAs “does not constitute a public record under section 7 of the Freedom of Information Ordinance, 2002”.

Pildat then complained to the Ombudsman of Pakistan maintaining that attendance of parliamentarians does not constitute ‘excluded information’ under section 15-18 of the FOI 2002 and that as an indigenous organisation of Pakistani citizens Pildat had the right to know the commitment and dedication of the members of the parliament towards their legislative duties for which they were elected through an electoral process.

Since the Provincial Assembly of the Punjab is already posting the attendance records of MPAs on its website, Pildat president, found the stance of the National Assembly “unfathomable and without legitimate ground”.

Read more: Minister ‘helpless’ to ensure NA attendance

Published in Dawn, July 11th, 2015

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