By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: The National Assembly was brought to a virtual standstill on Tuesday after the Pakistan Peoples Party, a key partner in the ruling coalition, forced the government to abandon a packed legislative agenda in protest at what it described as broken promises and unaddressed grievances, Dawn newspaper reported on Wednesday.
In scenes rarely witnessed in the lower house, 43 members took to their feet on points of order rather than proceed with the day’s business, which had included 21 bills alongside reports from National Assembly standing committees. The unusual session left ministers with little choice but to open the floor to backbenchers airing an array of unrelated concerns, from terrorism to medicine shortages, as the PPP’s blockade held.
A party source told Dawn that the disruption was likely to continue for as long as the session ran, with no legislative business expected to pass unless the government moved to address the party’s complaints. The source suggested ministers were hoping to introduce a contentious bill within days, but acknowledged it stood no chance of passing without PPP backing.
The scale of the disruption reflects the delicate arithmetic underpinning Pakistan’s ruling coalition. The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, which leads the government, does not command the two-thirds majority required to pass constitutional amendments in the National Assembly, leaving it reliant on smaller allies such as the PPP to push through significant legislation. By withholding its support on Tuesday, the PPP demonstrated just how much leverage that dependency affords it.
The session’s disrupted start set the tone for what followed. Proceedings, which typically begin at 11am on sitting days, did not get under way until 2.17pm, a delay attributed to backchannel negotiations aimed at placating the PPP. The sitting was later adjourned until 2.30pm on Wednesday, presumably to allow further talks before the assembly reconvenes.
The extent of the party’s discontent was evident from the moment Speaker Sardar Ayaz Sadiq attempted to open proceedings. When a lawmaker was called to table a standing committee report, the PPP’s chief whip in the house, Syed Naveed Qamar, moved swiftly to the Speaker’s dais to insist that no legislative business proceed at all.
The party’s frustration was underscored by the sparse turnout of its own members in the chamber, a deliberately pointed signal to the government that it would not lend its support to any constitutional amendment perceived as eroding fundamental rights or straying from the Constitution.
A PPP figure who spoke to Dawn on condition of anonymity set out the breadth of the party’s grievances: allegations of rigging in recent elections in Azad Jammu and Kashmir, the government’s failure to honour an agreement reached in Punjab, non-implementation of a separate written accord, unresolved questions over the creation of new provinces, and disagreements over pending legislation.
Opposition demands dedicated debate on terrorism
Amid the disruption, opposition leader Mehmood Khan Achakzai used his point of order to press the Speaker for a dedicated, multi-day debate on terrorism, arguing that the scale of violence in the country demanded sustained parliamentary attention rather than being crowded out by routine business.
“Here members are highlighting petty problems of their own constituencies, but the main problem is increasing terrorism in the country as about 40 to 50 people, including innocent citizens and law enforcement personnel, are killed every day,” he told the house. He called for two or three days to be set aside specifically for the issue, telling members: “Maybe we will find the solution.”
His appeal was echoed by lawmakers from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the province that has borne the brunt of a resurgence in militant violence. Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s Sahibzada Sibghat Ullah said the National Action Plan, the country’s counterterrorism framework, urgently needed to be revisited, and told the house that residents in his constituency had begun taking up arms against militants themselves. “It is the responsibility of the state and not the people to fight against terrorists,” he said, adding that farmers in the province were also being denied fertiliser, raising the prospect of a looming food crisis.
Fellow KP lawmaker Hamneed Ullah described how the main highway through his constituency had been blocked by militants for 22 hours, and questioned where the money spent on police and law enforcement was going. “The government has to tell who these people are and where they came from,” he said.
Abdul Ghafoor Haidri of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl told the assembly that ordinary Pakistanis wanted peace and a fairer distribution of resources between the provinces. He was also critical of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, arguing it had delivered little benefit to Pakistan even as Urumqi, the Chinese city bordering the country, had prospered.
Khushal Khan Kakar recalled a recent attack in which 35 police officers were killed, insisting the house needed to debate the episode directly, and raised the continued blocking of 600,000 national identity cards belonging to ethnic Pashtuns. PTI’s Sher Afzal Marwat, meanwhile, questioned what role the assembly would play should the government press ahead with its proposed 28th constitutional amendment, a measure that has already stirred controversy.
Members also used the session to raise flooding and its aftermath, the deteriorating state of national highways and what they characterised as inertia at the National Highway Authority, disruption to electricity and gas supplies, patchy 3G and 4G coverage in remote regions, and unresolved issues affecting the former tribal areas.
Responding on behalf of the government, Minister of State for Interior Talal Chaudhry said ministers were willing to hold a full parliamentary debate on terrorism, law and order, and the implementation of the National Action Plan, and were prepared to discuss all 14 points of the plan without descending into blame or political point-scoring. He voiced regret that opposition members had stayed away from security briefings, including in-camera sessions convened under the Speaker, and argued that the fight against militancy could not be won unless the country’s political forces united behind the security forces with a shared narrative.
Chaudhry also told the house that Afghan nationals had in some cases obtained Pakistani identity documents and had been fraudulently entered into family trees, and said around 5,000 Pakistani passports illegally acquired by Afghan nationals had been surrendered in Saudi Arabia alone.
Warnings over medicine shortages
Elsewhere in the session, PPP lawmaker Sharmila Faruqi raised what she described as a serious shortage of essential and life-saving medicines, calling on the federal government to intervene urgently.
She told the house that price-revision applications for 105 medicines classed as being in short supply had sat unresolved for more than two years, despite recommendations from the Drug Pricing Committee of the Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan, meaning the drugs could not be brought to market. Among the medicines affected, she said, were oral morphine, streptokinase injections, cisplatin, carboplatin, doxorubicin, paediatric digoxin liquid, pilocarpine eye drops, yellow fever vaccine and several immunoglobulin products.
Faruqi noted that the Cabinet Committee on Drug Pricing had approved prices for 52 newly registered life-saving medicines on 24 July, but said final approval and formal notification needed to be fast-tracked to ensure patients could actually access them.
Separately, the PPP’s Dr Mirza Ikhtiar Baig raised ongoing power cuts in Karachi attributed to the city’s electricity provider, K-Electric, and proposed a joint meeting between the federal power minister, MPs representing Karachi constituencies and the company’s senior management to address the problem.
UAE deportations raised
Several members, including PTI’s Asad Qaisar, told the house that the United Arab Emirates had grown markedly less welcoming towards Pakistani nationals since the outbreak of conflict in the Middle East, with hundreds of Pakistanis deported as a result.
Responding to the claims, Defence Minister Khawaja Asif offered an explanation for the deportations, telling the assembly: “They [deported Pakistanis] had supported a specific country during the war.”
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