ISLAMABAD: With a single vote on Wednesday, the National Assembly created its 34 standing committees, which came rather limpingly after more than six weeks of excused delay that the government blamed on compromises made with other parties.
Yet, one ally of the PML-N government, JUI-F, said it still had “reservations” about its representation in the committees as lawmakers of the religious party staged a token protest walkout on another grouse – postponement of a by-election for a National Assembly seat in Dera Ismail Khan division of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
The house rules required formation of the multiparty committees – the key Public Accounts Committee, committees on rules of procedure and privileges, house and library, government assurances, the finance committee and standing committees for various ministries and a special committee on Kashmir – within 30 days after the present government came into being with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif taking office on June 5.
But the issue dragged on much beyond the permitted time-frame owing to what the government called negotiations with all parties in the house about their representation proportionate to their strength in the 342-seat house, and when the first lists of the committee were presented on Aug 15, their approval, or election, by the house was put off further after complaints from some opposition parties and government allies of inadequate representation.
A motion moved by Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Sheikh Aftab Ahmed for the election of the committees, which must now elect their chairpersons at their separate meetings to make themselves fully functional, was adopted by the house. The JUI-F’s walkout on Wednesday in protest against the indefinite postponement from Thursday of the by-election in the Dera Ismail Khan-Tank constituency (NA-25) -- one of two seats vacated by party chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman after winning three in the May 11 general elections -- and its “reservations” about representation on the house committees seemed to signal strains with the PML-N, which has still not given it any representation in the federal cabinet and the Maulana’s name was also missing from the 21-member Special Committee on Kashmir whose chairmanship, which he held under the previous PPP-led coalition government, he was expected to seek as one of the prizes for the new alignment.
However, the house, in the motion adopted for the election of the committees, authorised its speaker, Sardar Ayaz Sadiq of the PML-N, to include new members in any committee and “make such changes in the composition of these committees as and when he may deem fit”.
The treasury benches, which don’t have a law minister since Zahid Hamid switched to science and technology ministry in June in connection with treason charges brought against his former boss and military president retired Gen Pervez Musharraf, seemed unaware of a presumed requirement to get the delay in the formation of the committees condoned by the house before Sheikh Rashid Ahmed of the opposition Awami Muslim League (AML) pointed it out to an obvious embarrassment for the government.
The AML chief, who served as information and broadcasting minister under Gen retired Pervez Musharraf with Zahid Hamid as law minister, spurned an unusual offer from Defence Production Minister Rana Tanveer Hussain to move the motion for the house to excuse the delay – “you do it, ‘main nay koi theka liya hua hai’? (or do I hold a contract for this ?), he retorted. Then the minister himself took upon himself the usual law minister’s job to move the motion in halting English with some difficulty for what he called “extension” of period for committee formation “till today” – which Deputy Speaker Murtaza Javed Abbasi, who chaired the day’s proceedings, corrected to “condone” (the delay), apparently on the house secretary’s advice.
The deputy speaker too faced some ire of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement after one of the party members, Ms Tahira Asif, accused him of threatening to get her arrested and thrown out of the house when she went to the rostrum to complain about not being allowed to speak on a point of order.