ISLAMABAD, November 3, 2018: The Provincial Assembly of Balochistan passed two government bills on Saturday which the opposition claimed had already been approved during the ongoing session, observers Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN) in its Daily Factsheet.

Following are key observations of the House proceedings during the third sitting of fourth session:

Members’ Participation

• The Assembly met for an hour and one minute.
• The sitting started at 1528 hours against the scheduled time of 1500 hours.
• The Speaker chaired the entire sitting.
• The Chief Minister did not attend the sitting.
• The Nominated Leader of the Opposition was present in the sitting.
• As many as 14 (21%) lawmakers were present at the outset and 24 (37%) at the adjournment of sitting.
• The parliamentary leaders of BNP-Awami, BNP-M, PkMAP and MMA were present.
• Only one out of three minority lawmakers attended the sitting.
• As many as eleven members applied for leave of absence.

Output

• The House passed the University of Gwadar Bill 2018 and the Balochistan Government Benevolent Fund Bill 2018. As many as five lawmakers debated these bills for 20 minutes.
• The opposition lawmakers objected against the passage of bills saying that bills have already been passed during first sitting of the ongoing session. The treasure, however, maintained that the bills were only introduced and not passed during the previous sitting.

Order and Institutionalization

• As many as seven members raised three points of order (POs) consuming 28 minutes. The POs highlighted the issues related to media’s protest on suspension their advertisements, assassination of Maulana Sami-ul-Haq and absence of treasure lawmakers from the proceedings.

Transparency

• ‘Orders of the Day’ was not available on the website of the Assembly.
• Attendance of Members was not made public.

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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.