The National Assembly ran two sessions today. Not much was achieved in any of them. “Count the Kvorummet”, Pakistan Tehreek-E-Insaf members of the National Assembly Chorine when the official session began.
“We were intended to discuss the floods and terrorist attacks in Balochistan today, sit down,” Na -speaker Ayaz Sadiq pleaded as the PTI members moved towards the exit.
On one day, when Punjab rolls from over two weeks of relentless, uninterrupted floods, and the country is overwhelmed by remaining damage from the recent deadly floods in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Gilgit-Baltistan, the opposition and the government could not devote their personal disdain to each other long enough to take the day’s agenda.
Thousands of citizens across the country have been displaced. They are tight in changing tents and government schools, where bathroom facilities are scarce and the food supply is limited. Cattle have been upset and huge hectares of agricultural land destroyed.
Read: Insundated India deliberately Pakistan?
This Monsun season, which began on June 16, has claimed 884 lives and wounded at least 1,176. In Buner, whole families have died in landslides triggered by stormy rain, while the entire Punjab entire villages has been upset.
Elsewhere, in Balochistan, there have been a number of terrorist attacks in recent months, with the latest taking earlier this week when a suicide bomber decimated 15 civilians in Quetta near a Polish rally. The striker had calculated to target the rally that Balochistan National Party (GDP) -mengal in protest against the Balochistan Yakjehti Committee (BYC) leader Dr. Mahrung Baloch, other Baloch political leaders and a police outbreak on ongoing sit-ins. The Quetta District Authorities had reportedly denied GDP-Mengal Lisence to hold the rally.
Nevertheless, our elected legislators, members of the National Assembly, are continuing their shocking tradition of leaving the disputes of the intra party higher than national concerns.
The federal law minister Azam Tarar accused PTI of being “selfish” and placing their political ambitions over “the needs of the country.”
But when PTI’s lawyer Gohar Ali Khan drew attention to National Disaster Management Authority’s (NDMA) performance during the floods, the live feed of the session was disturbed on the state’s TV company’s channel.
Khan ignored the law minister and marched down the hall and left with the rest of the opposition legislators. Khan said this was part of PTI’s continued boycott of parliament and established his party’s own improvised assembly outside Parliament’s premises. Asad Qaiser led the case during this “Awami assembly” – as they put it. Here, a “decision” was adopted to extend the deadline for repatriation of Afghan citizens. Those who are interested in the case remain unaware of this “assembly” jurisdiction.
Speaker Sadiq took the opportunity to remind the house that PTI complains of not getting room to present their views in the house and still left now when they had the floor.
When water goes downstream from Multan to Sindh, it is clear that the public cannot look at the country’s leaders for comfort. Is this people’s representatives who will lead us out of disaster as the country is struggling with climate change and resuscitation in terrorism.
With further reporting from chaudhry waqas
