ISLAMABAD, January 11, 2016: The National Assembly took up its entire agenda except a Calling Attention Notice during seventh sitting of 28th session on Monday, says Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN).
Following are some key observations of the House proceeding:
Members’ Participation in House Proceedings
- The National Assembly met for three hours and eight minutes.
- The House took a prayer break for 19 minutes.
- The sitting started at 1606 hours against its scheduled time of 1600 hours.
- The Speaker presided over the sitting for first 90 minutes while a member of the Panel of Chairpersons presided over the rest of the sitting.
- The Prime Minister was not present.
- The Leader of the Opposition attended the sitting for 40 minutes.
- Six Federal Ministers attended the sitting.
- 18 MNAs (5%) were present at outset and 47 (14%) at adjournment of the sitting.
- The parliamentary leaders of PkMAP, PML-Z, QWP-S, JI, APML and AMLP were present.
- Six minority members were present.
Output
- The House passed the Pakistan Bait-ul-Mal (Amendment] Bill, 2015 moved by the Minister for Parliamentary Affairs. Four members including the mover discussed the bill for five minutes.
Representation and Responsiveness
- The House took up 13 out of 31 starred questions appearing on the agenda. The members also asked 16 supplementary questions.
- Only 14 of 29 unstarred questions were replied.
- The Parliamentary Secretary for Finance, Revenue, Economic Affairs, Statistics & Privatization gave statement on a Calling Attention Notice regarding hundreds of acres of land affected due to water logging and salinity.
- Three lawmakers spoke on motion of thanks about Presidential Address to joint session of the Parliament. The discussion consumed 45 minutes.
Order and Institutionalization
- Six lawmakers spoke on Points of Order consuming 18 minutes of the proceeding.
- The parliamentarians belonging to MQM staged a walk-out for 14 minutes to protest against the delay in transfer of powers to elected local government representatives.
- The members belonging to PPPP walked out at 1858 hours against nomination of a party’s lawmaker in a criminal case.
- A lawmaker of PPPP pointed out the quorum at 1914 hours which was found incomplete on counting leading to the adjournment of the sitting.
Transparency
- ‘Orders of the Day’ was available to the legislators, observers and public.
- The attendance of lawmakers is available on website of National Assembly.
To download the factsheet, click here for English Version, click here for Urdu Version
This daily factsheet is based on direct observation of the National Assembly proceeding conducted by Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN). Errors and omissions are excepted