The polls yesterday for the election of the Speaker and the Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly (NA) reflected the strength of the party winning the majority seats in the country - i.e. Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) along with its allies. Although they managed to get the number of votes with a very small margin, it still allows them to field their own favourite candidates. Both Asad Qaiser (Speaker of NA) and Qasim Suri (Deputy Speaker of NA) are going to represent their party in one of the strongest institutions of the country.

There are important lessons to be learned from yesterday’s session of the parliament. There are many takeaways from the speech of former Speaker Ayaz Sadiq, who has spent a significant amount of time in that institution. He reiterated the need to be decent and always adopt the most profound of language in order to address allies and foes alike. The idea is to debate out the differences in a manner that reflects the choice of the voters and grants them the respect that they deserve in the parliament. As a Speaker of the NA, it is important to accommodate not just those affiliated with your own party but also those raising concerns otherwise.

The foundation of the parliament lies in the fact that the people who are elected by the masses are actually present in the parliament - an aspect which was grossly neglected by the lawmakers in the last five years. In order to address the concerns of the people and to be able to make effective policies, it is important that they are present in the parliament and playing the part that their job requires them to. The importance of a parliament of any country cannot be ignored due to political opposition.

At the same time, we also witnessed strong criticism for the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) for failing to do its job and also criticism against rigging in the elections. This shows that the opposition is in full charge but the difference in this tenure is that instead of planning to go out on the roads and be absent from the parliament, they are going to be debating the relevant policies where they actually matter.