As expected the ceaseless heckling, which almost each prominent minister of the Imran government recklessly incited to disrupt the speech of Shehbaz Sharif Tuesday afternoon, eventually culminated in free for all brawls. Like insane football hooligans, a huge crowd of “our representatives” furiously tried to fix ‘the other’ with nonstop rain of slaps and punches.

Before things reached an ugly climax, Asad Qaisar, the Speaker, visibly expected something like this to happen. He deployed a 20-plus group of security personnel to stand like a wall, separating the treasury and opposition benches. This miserably failed to deliver in the end. Many a security personnel rather endured bruises and minor wounds as collateral damage.

 

During an absolutely chaotic sitting of Tuesday, the Speaker also felt forced to adjourn the house twice with the clear intent of providing pause that might help calming the enraged members. But he did nothing substantive to preempt building the momentum for either/or showdown.

 

Cutting across the party divide, huge number of members from both sides of the aisle refused to leave the house during the final ‘recess.’ They had also preferred staying put in the house and continued with provocative slogan chanting during previous two “breaks.”

 

Finally, when the Opposition Leader was almost about to complete his unnecessarily lengthy speech, the Speaker correctly imagined the intensity of building rage. In panic, he again announced a break and left the house, perhaps to protect his own person. But rowdy members believed that by rushing out of the house this time, Asad Qaisar had furnished an open field for them. For more than 20 minutes, one could just not figure out who was hitting whom among the rioting crowd, squeezed around the Speaker’s dais.

 

Shehbaz Sharif proved lucky, because the security personnel and a group of his strong muscle loyalists smartly succeeded in taking him out of the house by cordoning him off through a security circle.

 

The government’s parliamentary handlers had clearly displayed their intent of disrupting proceedings on Monday. The moment, Shehbaz Sharif took the floor to deliver the general-debate-opening speech on budgetary proposals, presented by Shaukat Fayyaz Tarin, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, the most senior minister of the Imran government, stood up to demand the mic to present a point of order.

 

Established parliamentary practices do not permit such interruptions, when the opposition leader takes the floor to initiate the much-awaited general debate on budgetary proposals. But the Foreign Minister behaved deaf when the Speaker meekly tried to remind him the said practices. From the ministerial benches, then stood the threateningly bulky Amin Gandapur and he was fiercely backed with loud refrains of “Choor-Choor (Thieves).

 

To prevent chaos, the Speaker had decided to suspend proceedings for “20 minutes” and asked the government and opposition representatives to come to his office to reach some agreement on how to proceed with general debate on budgetary proposals. In spite of consuming more than three hours in search of a “respectable modus operandi,’’ the meeting in the Speaker’s chambers rather forced its participants to harden their positions.

 

The government representatives firmly conveyed to opposition representatives that Shehbaz Sharif and Bilawal Bhutto would only be heard with some ‘deference,’ if the opposition parties ensured, “in writing,” that they would also start listening to Prime Minister’s speeches in the national assembly, by extending respect his office deserves.

 

The opposition was not asked to behave during the presence of the prime minister only. A strange kind of “code of conduct” was also showed to them. This demanded that not only the prime minister but also the rest of ministers would not be interrupted with any heckling. The opposition members were also expected never to leave their seats for reaching the Speaker’s dais with protesting slogans and flaunting of placards.

 

The so-called code of conduct, the government wanted to enforce sounded absurd by all means. Rage remains the dominant mood of politics these days, not in Pakistan only but all across the world. Just imagined what had happened in and out of the US parliament on Jan 6 of this year. Politics in most of the countries remain deeply polarised and directly elected houses can just not avoid reflecting the heat of it. With sane management, you can only regulate the chaos to an extent and here the government has to take the required initiatives.

 

Sadly, the current government is not willing to budge. After consulting his colleagues, Shehbaz Sharif also decided to deliver his speech Tuesday, come what way. But the moment he got the floor, Shah Mahmood Qureshi stood to unleash subverting noise from the treasury benches. Hyperactive ministers like Murad Saeed, Fawad Chaudhry, Amin Gandapur and Dr. Shirin Mazari diligently assisted him.

 

A group of ruling party backbenchers also came to the house with whistles and cordless microphones. By furiously using them, they attempted hard that people sitting in the visitors’ galleries could not listen to a word of Shehbaz Sharif’s speech. Also too loud and nonstop were the chants of “Choor-Choor” and “T.T.” This later abbreviation stands for telegraphic transfer of money and recently Shehbaz Sharif had spent many months in jail, because the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) decided to arrest him for suspicions of “money laundering.”

 

Covering his ears with headphones, Shehbaz Sharif kept reading the written text of his speech. But the Speaker thought he should suspend the house to restore calm. The PML-N members felt doubly incensed with his conduct. Hardly a person from their benches left the house. They projected the Speaker’s going out as “running away” from the truth. To dispel this feeling, Asad Qaisar rushed back to his seat.

When the opposition leader resumed his speech, the government members felt doubly charged. This time the furious chanting also targeted Ms Maryam Nawaz, although she is not a member of this house. She, however, was constantly ‘remembered’ with zealous chants of “Maryam Ka Chacha Choor Hai (Maryam’s uncle is a thief).”

During the first break, Ali Awan, a PTI member from Islamabad also created violent scenes and thanks to his aggression, the PML-N members deliriously continued coining slogans and phrases, hitting the person of Imran Khan with certain ‘unparliamentarily’ words.

Even after deployment of the security personnel like a wall, separating the government and opposition benches, many PTI members kept desperately attempting to come close to Shehbaz Sharif to target him with ‘in your face’ chants. That provoked some PML-N members to erect their own human wall around the opposition leader.

Relentless attempt to “cross the line” the security personnel had furnished eventually led to complete bedlam and free for all slapping and punching. And I felt unable to punish myself further by staying put in my seat in the press gallery. With a heavy heart, I have to predict, however, that Tuesday was not the ending but in effect the real beginning of physical brawls on floor of the National Assembly of Pakistan.