It indeed is time that we ordinary Pakistanis realised that the Imran government and its political opponents are fighting no principle-driven war. They essentially are competing to prove more eligible for sharing power with the Praetorian Elite of this country and they have to play the competition game by some ‘rules,’ needing ‘parliament’, to begin with, as the staging arena.

“Our representatives” sit and play the roles of the government or the opposition in this arena, like professional actors. It sustains the illusion of having a functional parliamentary democracy in Pakistan.

Yet, in spite of constantly behaving like terribly bad actors our alleged ‘representatives’ keep charging fat salaries and savoring envy triggering perks.

The Imran government summoned another session of the National Assembly last week, without conceiving any substantial legislative agenda for it. The sole objective of summoning the said session was to fulfill the constitutional obligation of holding at least 130 sittings in a parliamentary year.

During its two initial sittings previous week, the number of members required for establishing the quorum remained embarrassingly missing. On average, the house could meet for less than an hour. But even the briefest sitting of the National Assembly is counted as ‘full working day’, and its member get heavy wages for the job undone. Parliamentary reporters felt forced to point out the blatant cheating. And the opposition has now stopped to point out the lack of quorum. The National Assembly thus began to look-busy-do-nothing.

With an obvious lack of quorum, both the treasury and opposition members continued to project the feel of holding “a National Assembly sitting,” Tuesday afternoon. This day is reserved for private initiatives in legislation and a heavy agenda was surely available to deal with.

But instead of coming straight to it, Ahsan Iqbal, a very senior representative of Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), took the floor by employing the excuse of a ‘point of order’. Through the same, he delivered a lamenting sermon to remind the Chair that the Imran government was refusing to let the elected local bodies effectively ‘function’ in the most populous province of Pakistan, i.e., Punjab. The government’s conduct in this respect also defies clearly stated directions of the Supreme Court of Pakistan.

 

Wailing over the alleged ‘defiance’ of the Supreme Court by the Imran government, Ahsan Iqbal went on to recall what had happened to a previous prime minister. He obviously was referring to Yousaf Raza Gillani.

 

After being restored as the Chief Justice, Iftikhar Chaudhry wanted to get the then President Asif Ali Zardari, by all means. He firmly asked the Government of Pakistan to write a formal letter to the Swiss government to find out how many millions of the US dollar AAZ had secretly been keeping in the banks in that country. Prime Minister Gillani kept pleading that he had not the authority to approach a foreign country to seek cooperation for exposing the real or alleged corruption of the President of Pakistan. His hesitance was eventually declared “contempt of the court” and due to this, he had to be thrown out of the Prime Minister’s Office.

 

Nawaz Sharif, another prime minister, was summoned by the Supreme Court to explain the means of his phenomenal wealth. He didn’t resist a la Gillani. Yet, in the end he was not found squeaky clean and had to vacate the Prime Minister’s Office for this.

 

Referring to previous examples, Ahsan Iqbal kept passionately wondering why the current Supreme Court was not feeling upset about the Imran government’s alleged defiance, related to its orders directing the restoration of local bodies in Punjab.

 

Ahsan Iqbal had undoubtedly narrated facts. Yet, the question remains: How can the Speaker or the Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly approach the Supreme Court to demand execution of its orders? Being a veteran parliamentarian, Professor Ahsan Iqbal needs no tutor to get the answer to this question. He was just attempting to score points with the intent of claiming space in the media on apparently a ‘lean’ day in the national assembly.

 

Ahsan Iqbal’s party, Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), claims to be the most popular in Punjab. Until some weeks ago, it was even threatening to bring its supporters to Islamabad with the intent of extracting the resignation of Imran Khan from the Prime Minister’s Office.

 

Supporters of the same party dominate most local bodies in Punjab these days. Why don’t they march to Islamabad and approach the Supreme Court to plead the restoration of local bodies. After all, the Supreme Court was initially not interested to move against Nawaz Sharif as well, when the so-called Panama Papers had erupted like an explosive scandal in April 2016. But Imran Khan took up the cause and mobilised people to continue pressing for it, feverishly.

 

The PML-N certainly has a perfect moment to repeat history. No one from its ranks seems really willing to put up a fight, though. And without any genuine will to indulge in long term struggle, PML-N leaders like Ahsan Iqbal keep themselves busy by spinning bombastic stories.

 

Khurram Dastagir Khan, another PML-N leader, often avoids spinning trivial points. But Ahsan Iqbal inspired him to make an attempt on a different subject. He also took the floor in the name of “point of order” to recall the importance of July 13 for the tragic history of Kashmir. Recalling the same, he quickly reached to claim that the Imran government miserably failed to prevent the Modi government of India from taking draconian initiatives for enslaving Kashmiris. Then he switched to remind the house that on July 25, 2021, elections for the Azad Kashmir are to be held.

Talking about them, he referred to certain videos that had gone viral on social media. Ali Amin Gandapur, the minister in charge of Kashmir Affairs, was shown throwing money to buy votes for candidates Imran Khan’s PTI had nominated for these elections. Dastagir Khan was justifiably agitated about those videos. He also sounded convincing while pressing the point that in the given context, the Government of Pakistan must ensure holding of perfectly free, fair and transparent elections in Azad Kashmir.

But his points provided a huge space for Ali Mohammad Khan, the state minister of parliamentary affairs, to deliver a thundering speech. It passionately claimed that after enduring the “corrupt and incompetent governments of the PPP and the PML-N,” the people of Azad Kashmir were now eagerly waiting for the PTI government in their area. Overwhelming majority of Pakistanis had done the same while casting votes during the election of July 2018. The history is set to repeat itself in Azad Kashmir.

After his speech, I could not keep myself sitting in the press gallery. The lead characters of the government and the opposition had surely played their ‘acts’ and that was more than enough for me to bear with.

The House was later adjourned, anyway, until Wednesday morning, because the opposition felt extremely annoyed with the absence of ministers required in the National Assembly for dealing with the business put on its agenda.