• Session Prorogued

ISLAMABAD, February 19, 2021: The Provincial Assembly of Balochistan consumed major part of the proceeding in points of order and deferred question hour due to movers’ absence, observes Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN) in its Daily Factsheet on Friday.

Following are key observations of the House proceedings during the first and last sitting of the 33^rd session:

Members’ Participation

• The House met for an hour and 35 minutes.
• The sitting started at 1710 hours against the scheduled time of 1600 hours.
• The Speaker presided over the entire sitting.
• The Deputy Speaker was also present.
• The Leader of the House did not attend the sitting.
• The Leader of the Opposition attended the entire proceedings.
• As many as 18 MPAs (28%) were present at the outset and 16 (25%) at the adjournment of the sitting.
• The parliamentary leaders of BNP-M, ANP, HDP and PkMAP attended the proceedings.
• Two out three minority lawmakers were absent.

Representation and Responsiveness

• The House deferred question hour due to movers’ absence. The questions were related to Departments of Public Health Engineering and Sports.
• The House passed a motion to declare the hall of Provincial Assembly as polling station for the upcoming Senate Elections on March 3, 2021.

Order and Institutionalization

• Eight lawmakers spoke on points of order for an hour and three minutes.
• The Session was prorogued sine die.

Transparency

• ‘Orders of the Day’ was available to the legislators, observers and others.
• Attendance of the lawmakers was not available to the observers and media.

This daily factsheet is based on direct observation of the Balochistan Assembly proceedings conducted by Center for Peace and Development (CPD) – a member organization of FAFEN. Errors and omissions are excepted