ISLAMABAD  - They made it a day with taxpayers’ hard-earned money, but nothing doing. The duo of honourable senators, Aitzaz Ahsan and Raza Rabbani, got more media coverage from the mock Upper House proceedings than they would have got in the actual House. Both deserve all the kudos for conceiving, propagating and then implementing a ‘brilliant’ media coverage idea – mainly to get attention of television screens and flashy tickers.
A front page story in newspapers will be an added advantage. But overwhelmed by the media response, we hear, the show will continue. More theatre characters will be unveiled by none other than Leader of the Opposition in the Senate Aitzaz Ahsan Thursday morning. With Constitution Avenue, lawyers and the civil society’s agitation days still fresh in his mind, he feels more intense and open coverage is only possible through the mock Senate in the glitter of television cameras. In the actual hall, it is only the government-run state television that won’t fit in his fun-laden spree. The tangle which prompted this mess in the real Senate Hall is complex and difficult to understand for even the press corps, what to talk about the masses.
The fuss is actually about the body language and insulting words allegedly uttered by the interior minister in the Senate that day, while seated. The minister and many of his colleagues from the treasury, think (or hide behind a parliamentary technicality) that it was not part of the proceedings as legislators do gesture during proceedings, thump desks, raise slogans – how unparliamentary it may be – until declared otherwise by the chair. The Opposition thinks it is unbecoming of a minister to adopt such an attitude, not expected from a senior parliamentarian like Nisar returning undefeated to the National Assembly since 1985, a distinction enjoyed by none amongst the present lot.
On his part, and after being prompted by the ruling party elders, the Chaudhry from Chakri has asked the Lower House to form a committee comprising Opposition members to fix the responsibility. Aitzaz rejected the same demanding the matter be resolved in the Senate where it all started. The experienced lawmaker and lawyer in him had the guts to declare the regular Senate session inside the parliament building as illegal, the one held at the lawns as the real one. On Wednesday night, Aitzaz spelled out today’s agenda of his mock Senate session in a television talk show. He wants to unleash a character depicting the interior minister, ostensibly to entertain the legislators and media and add an interesting dimension to the whole complex-cum-boring tangle. Nothing doing under duress was the loud and clear message of this ‘august’ ceremony thronged by some former legislators on the first houseful day.
Interestingly, the media contingent covering this event, including news channel cameramen, was safely double the size of the legislators from the Upper House of Parliament. Safe estimates predict two more days in the headlines and that, too, in case interesting dimensions are added. The pen pushers are easily drawn in to such events with no easy exit. The electronic media is all about footage and action, remembering the Sikandar episode at Blue Area in the heart of the capital. One wonders to what extent. But tucked in their comfortable king size chairs, how many of the elderly, gray-haired, relatively more educated legislators thought they were wasting the hard-earned taxpayers’ money. At least none in PPP and ANP backbenches could dare spill the beans. It is like tackling an unruly mob of experienced yet self-praising political elite in the Parliament, who throng the legislator just to pass time when they are done with rest of their important works. It may be the best of pass times they have.
Wednesday morning’s mock Senate under an open tent in the sprawling lawns of the Parliament House was prepared carefully by PPP’s media brains to propagate the ‘novel’ idea of free speech. Underneath it seemed no more than a clash of egos between the PPP duo of top parliamentarians and the interior minister.
Surprisingly, the PPP-ANP-PML-Q etc amalgam is not getting support from JUI and MQM in the Senate as the government is able to maintain quorum. The situation is grimmer for PPP in the Lower House. Despite Khurshid Shah’s seemingly feeble efforts to act as the real Opposition leader, PTI and MQM are not ready to fuel the Aitzaz-Rabbani-Nisar clash of egos. PTI’s second-in-command Shah Mahmood Qureshi and MQM Parliamentary Leader Farooq Sattar want their PPP colleagues to focus attention on the burning issues taken up at the sessions in progress. It shouldn’t be taken as a snub from a sizeable section of the Lower House opposition to the Opposition Leader and ilk in the Upper House. All this is happening at a time when the Lower but more powerful House of the Parliament had taken up since Monday the Taliban chief’s killing in an American drone, and everyone seemed disturbed about its consequences in the shape of reprisal suicide attacks. Initiation of the dialogue process with TTP comes next. But the Senate Opposition didn’t want to get impressed with the spadework done by Chaudhry Nisar for government-Taliban talks. They were only interested in getting across their point of view, not to seek an apology from Nisar on the figures he had quoted about drone-related killings in Pakistan, both of terrorists and innocents. They only wanted to nail him down.
For now the plan to humble the Chaudhry from Chakri is not working. Let us see what PPP has in store for today’s show. May be a more lengthy, gripping and entertaining episode under a tight security, amidst senseless laughters.