The National Assembly concluded the legislative business and was prorogued on Tuesday, in less than two hours. In this time it was able to attend to (or leave out) majority of the 36 items listed in the day's business sheet.
It amply exposes the extent of seriousness of the house during the year-end, when it has 38 days left to complete the mandatory term of 130 working days in a year.
As some parliamentarians feel 130 days are too many, compelling to include the two holidays, (Saturday, Sunday) in the list of working days, there was Mr Bhandara to ruffle them.
He is all for amending the Constitution to include a proposal that there should be 100 working days of the House, and one should not include holidays in the count. As usual Bhandara's proposal was deferred. His proposals rarely receive the leave of the House, although it accepted many persons' think that his proposals might enhance legislative or oversight capacity of the institution and provide a basis for good governance.
As usual indifferent toward the issues of public importance, the House on Tuesday missed an opportunity to debate on the prevalent flour crisis in the country. The matter could not be discussed because of the absence of the Food and Agriculture Minister Sikandar Hayat Bosan. Perhaps he knew the charged sentiments of the people on this issue, especially when the Government had gone to native town promising to export a minuscule portion of the bumper crop of wheat this year.
Before leaving for Sialkot, he let the House slide into a discussion of Gasmen Raman's Resolution that the government should take immediate steps to eradicate poverty.
No need for a formal resolution, said Law Minister Zahid Hamid since the government was already busy doing that. Several ruling party members tried to paint a rosy picture of the conditions while defending the multi-dimensional progress by the government Bhandara had actually had bad news for the country. "The population of the country is increasing at a fast rate and we have new mouths to feed everyday, we will soon have more than 35 per cent of the population below the poverty line", Bhandara said but his effort of playing the role of the Minister of summing up of a debate did nothing to please some listeners.
In fact Fauzia Wahab actually took issues against what she perceived to be a penchant on the part of Bhandara to praise dictatorial government and run down political ones.
Parliamentarians should not practice such disservice to democracy and democratic governments, and in fact she came out with a focused defence of political regimes in the country since 1988 and said those were days of grim economy when the country was under economic sanction from many quarters.
In a way these were some kind words even for Nawaz Sharif, an attempt perhaps on Fauzia Wahab's part to inspire kind thoughts for the PPP among the PML-N ranks. But they were not in the House to listen after tendering their resignation.
There were only 48 members in the House including Communication Minister Shamim Siddiqui, Law Minister Zahid Hamid, and Interior State Minister Zafar Warraich, including 25 PPP Legislators sitting on opposition benches.
Actually the presence in the House was 50 per cent less than the quorum required to run the business of the house but there was no one to question the disability. However, Naveed Qamar tried to create some rumpus but he was failed to provide the right bounce for the cause to catch on obviously a majority of members did not want to be disturbed from the feel-good mood they do not want to upset the apple cart after helping the President with 252 'yes' votes last Saturday.
Speaker Chaudhry Amir Hussain was careful and unwilling not to spoil members' happy mood, and he was on way to Sialkot where he had arranged a grand and festive Iftar Party for his constituents- but we may be sure that the Speaker would also use the occasion to solicit votes.