ISLAMABAD, May 26, 2017: The federal government presented the Finance Bill, 2017 in the National Assembly on Friday along with the Supplementary Demands for Grants for 2016-17 and Excess Demands for Grants for financial years 1998-99 and 2003-04, observes Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN) in Daily Factsheet.
Following are key observations of the proceedings during third sitting of the 43rd session:
Members’ Participation
- The National Assembly met for two hours and 13 minutes.
- The sitting started at 1640 hours against the scheduled time of 1600 hours.
- The Speaker presided over the entire sitting while the Deputy Speaker was not present.
- The Leader of the House (Prime Minister) attended the entire sitting while the Leader of the Opposition was present for an hour and 48 minutes.
- As many as 182 lawmakers (53%%) were present at the outset and 170 (49%) at the adjournment of sitting.
- The parliamentary leaders of MQM, JUI-F, JI, PML-F, QWP-S, APML, PML-Z, ANP and AMLP attended the sitting.
- Eight minority lawmakers were present.
Output
- Federal Minister for Finance, Revenue, Economic Affairs, Statistics and Privatization presented before the House the Finance Bill, 2017, the Supplementary Demands for Grants and Appropriations for financial year, 2016-2017 and the Excess Demands for Grants of financial years 1998-99 and 2003-04. His budget speech consumed an hour and 52 minutes of the proceedings.
Order and Institutionalization
- The Leader of the Opposition spoke on a Point of Order consuming five minutes of the sitting.
- The lawmakers belonging to opposition parties staged a protest for three minutes over the use of force against farmers protesting outside the Parliament House. Later, they walked out of the House on the same issue for 15 minutes.
Transparency
- Orders of the Day was available to the legislators, observers and public.
- Attendance of lawmakers was available to the media and observers.
- The copies of the budget speech were available.
This daily factsheet is based on direct observation of the National Assembly proceedings conducted by Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN). Errors and omissions are excepted.