ISLAMABAD: The ordinances promulgated by the government have outnumbered the laws passed by the National Assembly during its second parliamentary year which ended on August 12, exposing the dismal performance of the country’s top legislature not only in terms of legislation but also in terms of smooth conduct of proceedings and the prime minister’s attendance.

Also read: PTI bulldozes 11 ordinances through NA

The official data shows that the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf-led coalition government mostly depended on promulgation of ordinances for doing legislation and issued a total of 31 ordinances as compared to seven during the last parliamentary year, despite severe criticism by opposition parties.

These included the two most controversial ordinances — one seeking amendment to the National Accountability Ordinance, 1999, and the other aimed at allowing Indian spy Kulbhushan Jadhav to have consular access in the light of the judgement of the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

The ordinance seeking amendment to the National Accountability Ordinance, 1999, has already lapsed after completing its 120-day constitutional life whereas the Kulbhushan Jadhav-specific ICJ (Review and Reconsideration) Ordinance 2020, promulgated on May 20, is set to lapse next month.

Imran attended nine sittings while Shahbaz came to house thrice during second parliamentary year

Opposition parties alleged that the government had promulgated it secretly to appease India. On the other hand, the government defended the promulgation of the ordinance and stated that the ordinance was needed to follow the ICJ verdict as well as demolish India’s plan to move the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) against Pakistan.

Members of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz and Pakistan Peoples Party initially opposed the government’s move to lay the ordinance before the NA last month, terming it intolerable, unacceptable and against the national prestige, but later allowed its laying after reaching a behind-the-scenes understanding with the government.

Legislation

On the other hand, the government managed to get 29 bills passed from the National Assembly and one from the joint sitting of parliament during the second parliamentary year.

Last year, the National Assembly had passed only 10 bills which included a constitution amendment and three finance bills — Finance Act, 2019, and two supplementary finance amendment bills — in its 12 sessions. These also included two bills seeking repealing of previous laws after the enactment of new legislations as a mere formality.

This year too, out of the total 30 bills which the government managed to get passed from the parliament included the Finance Act 2020, nearly a dozen bills which were needed to be passed to fulfil the requirements of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) to bring Pakistan out of the grey list of the countries with respect to terror financing and three other bills seeking extension in the tenures of the three chiefs of the armed forces of Pakistan.

The government had managed to get all these bills passed with the support of opposition parties. As far as the remaining about a dozen bills are concerned, most of them could not become the act of parliament as the government failed to get them through the Senate where the opposition is in a majority.

The official data shows that the government introduced a total of 52 bills in the assembly as compared to 19 in the first parliamentary year. The lower house of the parliament witnessed introduction of 110 private member’s bills in the second parliamentary year as compared to 49 the previous year.

The number of private member’s bills pending before various standing committee of the house has now crossed 150 mark due to the government’s liberal policy of not opposing the bills at the time of introduction but not proactively pursuing them in the committees.

Number of Sittings

Besides this, the government had to drag the assembly session for nearly more than two months in order to meet the constitutional requirement of holding the assembly sessions for a minimum of 130 days in a parliamentary year. The data shows that the NA remained in session for 133 days during the second parliamentary year. The number of actual sittings, however, comes to only 91 as under the rules the two days sandwiched between two working days are also counted as the session days.

Rule 47 of the Rules of Procedure and Conduct of Business in the National Assembly 2012 states: “There shall be at least three sessions of the Assembly every year, and not more than one hundred and twenty days shall intervene between the last sitting of the Assembly in one session and the date appointed for its first sitting in the next session: provided that the Assembly shall meet for not less than one hundred and thirty working days in each parliamentary year.”

Tense Proceedings

Like the previous year, a number of assembly sittings were marred by ruckus due to the tense atmosphere in the house, with the treasury and opposition members even coming to blows on a couple of occasions, forcing the speaker and the deputy speaker to abruptly adjourn the sittings after failing to maintain order in the house. The opposition on many occasions also used the quorum as the tool to disrupt the house proceedings after staging walkouts to prevent ministers, particularly Communications Minister Murad Saeed, from responding to their speeches.

On a number of occasions, the assembly witnessed verbal clashes between members of the ruling PTI, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement and the PPP over the issues related to Karachi city, particularly the mismanagement by the Karachi Electric causing great hardships to the people of the megacity.

The other issues dominating the assembly proceedings throughout the second parliamentary year included the locust attacks in different parts of the country, coronavirus situation and its handling by the government, pilots’ licence issue and wheat and sugar scams. The house also held debates on the country’s agriculture policy while a debate on the privatisation policy is still inconclusive.

Attendance

The opposition parties kept on raising the issue of long absence of Prime Minister Imran Khan from the assembly proceedings, despite the fact that he had in his first speech after his election had announced that he would attend the sittings regularly to respond to questions of the members on the pattern of the UK’s House of Commons.

The attendance record shows that Mr Khan, who had attended 12 sittings (14pc) as the prime minister in the first parliamentary year, only attended nine sittings (less than 10 per cent) during the second year.

Interestingly, Opposition Leader Shahbaz Sharif only attended three sittings throughout the year. It was after a gap of 10 months that Mr Sharif attended the Parliament’s joint session on August 6. Last time he had attended the sitting on September 30 last year before leaving for London with former prime minister Nawaz Sharif in November and then confining himself to Lahore due to illness after returning home in March.

Published in Dawn, August 17th, 2020