Agonisingly callous realities of the madhouse, called the National Assembly of Pakistan, were fully exposed Monday evening.
The lower house of our Parliament was holding the first sitting of a new session, primarily summoned to approve “The Finance (Supplementary) Bill,” popularly called the mini-budget. But too close to this session’s commencement, an overwhelming majority of our people had remained glued to social media platforms, throughout the last weekend. They were too anxious to find out the latest regarding a real life tragedy, relentlessly unfolding in Murree.
At this “hill station,” famous for attracting crowds of tourists since the early days of the British Raj, thousands of visitors surely appeared as if completely abandoned by the state. Under the heaps of snow, at least twenty people, including children, were also found dead while frozen in their cars.
Our so-called “representatives” could obviously not afford to appear as if disregarding the said tragedy by focusing on the day’s agenda in a business-as-usual manner. Suspending the same, they rather attempted to flaunt their ‘humane sides’ by deciding to discuss the heart wrenching events of Murree.
As Opposition Leader, Shehbaz Sharif monopolises the right to open any debate in the National Assembly. But on Monday he doubly deserved this privilege for remaining a hands-on Chief Minister of Punjab for two consecutive terms from 2008 to 2018. And Murree also fell under his domain. Yet for another time, Shehbaz Sharif preferred delivering a desultory speech, miserably lacking focus.
I felt seriously disappointed with his flat speech; primarily due to the fact that throughout the unfolding of upsetting events in Murree, a significant number of even his diehard critics had constantly been admitting that as the Chief Minister of Punjab, he used to work overtime to ensure that snow watching in Murree must furnish memorable pleasure for fun seeking visitors. Thanks to his accumulated administrative experience, he certainly was the one and only member present in the House Monday evening who could have told us what exactly had gone wrong in and around Murree throughout the last three days of the past week.
Instead of revealing hard facts and focusing on explaining operative details of SOPs, the administration in places like Murree must employ to prevent tragic incidents during the snowy season, Mr Sharif rather kept passionately demanding that a judicial commission should be established to found out the real causes of the Murree tragedy and fix responsibility on persons obviously committing dereliction of duty.
Fawad Chaudhry, the Information Minister, should have ignored the soft-sounding speech of Shehbaz Sharif to keep the House focused on the recent events in Murree. But he can’t even breathe without scoring points against his opponents. After getting the floor, Chaudhry kept mocking and deriding not only Mr Sharif but also the whole of his family and the party, PML-N, as the “crowd of pygmies.” With sadistic grins and provocatively mocking tone he also went on and on to repeat stories, projecting Shehbaz Sharif and his family as compulsively addicted to corruption and money laundering etc.
With the start of heavy snowing in Murree early last week, Fawad Chaudhry had also posted a Tweet. It was broadly read and later critically discussed in regular and social media. Through this tweet, the information minister proudly cheered at the unprecedented number of vehicles entering Murree. He strongly believed that the record-making crowd gleefully rushing to Murree for snow watching loudly affirmed this government’s claim that the honest and visionary leadership of Imran Khan had unleashed a huge wave of prosperity in Pakistan. The new-found prosperity was now inspiring the mass of our public to spend the huge amounts of disposable incomes for pleasure seeking activities.
He also sounded subtly justifying the unfortunate happenings in Murree during his speech Monday, by insisting that tourists-catering infrastructures of the past were failing to cope with the massive surge of craving for internal tourism. But Prime Minister Imran Khan is determined to radically update and revamp the rotten infrastructure, until reaching the end of his second term, expected to start after two years.
His speech instantly provoked derogatory shouts from the opposition benches. He acted deaf to them, however, with very thick skin and left the house after finishing his speech. Yet, the speech he delivered completely ruined the real purpose of holding the general discussion of the tragic events of Murree during the last week. It rather turned into an ugly exercise in petty point scoring and mutual mudslinging. The shades of mockery Fawad Chaudhry had furnished to the general discussion on a highly disturbing calamity definitely overshadowed the speech of Bilawal Bhutto Zardari as well.
Meanwhile, backbenchers from both sides of the House ceaselessly went on with taunting shouts at each other. Their behavior helped Speaker Asad Qaisar to act like a scolding schoolteacher. Almost despondently, he kept reminding the members of his August-pretending House that a huge scale tragedy had recently occurred in Murree. The discussion on it should seriously try to locate its real causes while discussing the issue, “somberly.” And members of the National Assembly must not appear as if discussing a heart wrenching tragedy like heartless juveniles. Not a person cared to take his pleading seriously.
And I also felt forced to quit watching Monday’s proceedings of the National Assembly. You certainly need to be an obsessive masochist to continue listening to gibbering speeches on a heartbreaking disaster that was man-made by all means. It certainly deserved ruthless oversight of facilities available to our people, desperately waiting for the opportunities to have some fun in these days of absolute gloom.