The Senate uproar

As if the persistent lack of quorum in both houses of Parliament was not bad enough, the Senate presented a particularly unsavoury spectacle on Tuesday. The Opposition members would not let the proceedings start with, as they described him, a 'stranger in the chair', who happened to be none other than the former law minister and an ex-judge of the Lahore High Court, Senator Khalid Ranjha, who in the past has been presiding over the proceedings on several occasions.
What triggered the Opposition protest was that both the Chairman and Deputy Chairman were absent from the House, the former because he has to serve as the Acting President while President General Pervez Musharraf is abroad and the latter because he had another appointment as Governor of NWFP.
Even though the Deputy Chairman became governor last March, the ruling party has failed to pick his replacement due to internal quibbling.
The leader of the Opposition in the Senate, Senator Raza Rabbani, referring to the relevant rules correctly pointed out that only the Chairman or the Deputy Chairman has the authority to announce a panel of presiding officers to stand in for them, and that must be done inside the House.
Hence he and his colleagues refused to accept the treasury benches' decision to have Ranjha preside over the session. Rabbani later called a press conference where he contended that "this session will remain illegal, even if the House, with consensus, agrees on a senator who may chair the proceedings."
Only the court can decide whether the session was legal or illegal. However, the government could have avoided the uproar by commencing the session before the President's overseas trip or fixing the session after the return of the President so that the Senate Chairman could return to perform the task for which he has been elected.
The episode looks particularly ugly given that it was known for quite sometime that the President would go to the US to attend the UNGA annual session, which means the government had ample time to work out a proper schedule for the Senate session.
The leader of the House, Wasim Sajjad as well as Ranjha, who insisted on carrying on the business as usual, both were put in an awkward position. They could have served their side better if only they had decided to play by the rules or come to an understanding with the opposition in the Chairman's chamber before the start of the session. Needless to say, it is the job of the party in power to ensure that unnecessary controversy on any pretext is avoided and the legislative process continues smoothly.
Unfortunately, the legislators seem to have little interest in their work, and most of them see their membership of Parliament as a means to claim perks and privileges rather than a responsibility to advance public interest through law-making and to discuss and debate government policies and programmes.
That tendency finds encouragement from the fact that the present cabinet is perhaps the biggest ever, and still the government has employed a big army of advisors.
So far as law-making is concerned, bills are steamrollered through Parliament without the necessary debate. In fact, the same day the fiasco was witnessed in the Senate, the Opposition felt compelled to stage a walkout from the National Assembly after Imran Khan's microphone was switched off while he wanted to speak on the issue of alleged rigging in the local bodies elections. MMA legislators also complained later that the government does not allow discussion of important national issues like petroleum prices and unemployment as well as foreign policy questions.
The situation being what it is, some leaders have expressed the apprehension that it is part of a well thought-out plan to make Parliament irrelevant to the decision making process in order to usher in presidential form of system. Such interpretations may be no more than mere kite flying, but they can easily create political uncertainty, causing economic instability. The government, therefore, must ensure that the legislative business is conducted as per normal rules and procedures, and also that members of the ruling coalition are encouraged to perform the role for which they are elected and paid a lot of money out of the public exchequer.