ISLAMABAD, January 6, 2012: The National Assembly left all the Agenda items that appeared on the Orders of the Day unaddressed during its last sitting of the 37^th session.

Spread over an hour and 49 minutes, the sitting was marked by low attendance of Members with 72 Legislators present at the start and 125 there when the session prorogued.

Just like the previous sittings, the tussle over the issue of new provinces continued, and Members raised Points of Order to debate on the issue. A total of 27 Points of Order were raised, consuming 93% of the sitting time. However, none of the Points of Order attracted the Chair’s formal ruling

The Prime Minister attended the sitting for 50 minutes. The Leader of the Opposition was not present. Only the parliamentary leaders of the MQM, NPP and PPPS attended the proceedings.

Members’ participation in House proceedings

• The National Assembly met for an hour and 49 minutes.
• The last sitting started at 1106 hours instead of the scheduled starting time of 1000 hours. The proceedings started 66 minutes late.
• The Deputy Speaker chaired the sitting; the Speaker was not present. The Prime Minister was present for 50 minutes. The Leader of the Opposition did not attend the proceedings.
• The Parliamentary Leaders of the MQM, PPPS and NPP were the only ones present, while the leaders of the MMAP, ANP, PML and PMLF were absent.
• The Chief Whips of ANP, PMLN, PML, MQM, MMAP and PPPP were present, while those of the BNPA and PMLF were absent.
• A total of 72 (21%) Members were present at the outset of the sitting while there were 125 (37%) Members at the end of the sitting.
• Six out of 10 minority Members were present.

Representation and Responsiveness

• The House did not take up any of the Calling Attention Notices (CANs) which appeared on the Orders of the Day.
• Twenty-five questions appeared on the Agenda, which were not taken up by the House.

Output

• The Shifa Tameer-e-Millat University Bill, 2011 was not taken up by the House.

Order and institutionalization

• A total of 27 Points of Order were raised, consuming 101 minutes (93% of the sitting time). However, none of the Points of Order attracted the Chair’s formal ruling.
• The House witnessed a tussle between the Members of the PMLN, ANP and MQM over the issue of new provinces.

Transparency

• Orders of the Day were available to Legislators, observers and others.
• Information on Members’ attendance was unavailable to observers and the public.
• The Quorum was visibly lacking at various stages during the sitting. However, lack of quorum was not pointed out by any Member.

The Daily Factsheet is based on direct observation of the Senate proceedings conducted by Center for Peace and Development Initiatives (CPDI), a member organization of FAFEN