The National Assembly held two sessions today. Much was not achieved in any of them. “Count the Quorum,” he ran to the members of the National Assembly of Pakistan Tehreek-E-Insaf, as the official session began.
“We were destined to discuss floods and the terrorist attack in Baluchistan today, please sit down,” Na Ayaz Sadiq begged while PTI members advanced towards the exit.
In a day, when Punjab wobbles more than two weeks of implacable and uninterrupted floods, and the country is overwhelmed by the residual damage of the recent floods of death in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Gilgit-Baltistan, the opposition and the government could not set aside their personal disdain to take the agenda of the day.
Thousands of citizens throughout the country have been displaced. They are pressed in change tents and government schools, where bathroom facilities are scarce and food supply is limited. The cattle have been uprooted and vast acres of devastated agricultural lands.
Read: Did India deliberately flood Pakistan?
This Monzón season, which began on June 16, 884 lives has been charged and at least 1,176 has wounded. In Buner, entire families have perished in landslides caused by torrential rain, while through Punjab entire peoples have been uprooted.
In other places, in Baluchistan, there have been a series of terrorist attacks in recent months, with the most recent shot earlier this week, when a suicide bomber decimated 15 civilians in Quetta near a political demonstration. The attacker intended to attack the concentration taken by the National Party of Baluchistan (BNP) -Mengal in protest for the leader of the Baluchistan Committee Yakjehti (Byc), Dr. Mahrung Baloch, other political leaders of Baloch, and a police offensive against ongoing sitting. According to the reports, the Quetta district authorities had denied BNP-Mengal Lisence to celebrate the demonstration.
However, our elected legislators, members of the National Assembly, continue their firm tradition of letting the disputes within the party remain higher than national concerns.
The Federal Law Minister Azam Tarar accused the PTI of being “selfish” and positioning his political ambitions above the “needs of the country.”
However, when PTI Gohar Ali Khan’s lawyer caught attention to the performance of the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) during floods, live feeding of the session was interrupted in the state broadcaster channel.
Khan ignored the Minister of Law and marched down the hall, leaving the rest of the opposition legislators. Khan said that this was part of the Boicot continuum of PTI’s house and established the improvised assembly of his party outside the facilities of Parliament. Asad Qaiser led the procedures during this “Awami Assembly”, as they expressed. Here, a “resolution” was approved to extend the deadline for the repatriation of Afghan citizens. Those who deprive the matter still do not realize the jurisdiction of this “assembly.”
President Sadiq took this opportunity to remind the house that PTI complains about not receiving space to present his views at the house and, nevertheless, they were now when they had the floor.
As the water goes down from Fishh to Sindh, it is evident that the public cannot seek comfort to the country’s leaders. Are these representatives of the people who will take us out of disaster as the country dealt with climate change and resurgence in terrorism?
With additional reports from Chaudhry Waqas
