ISLAMABAD, December 24, 2015: The Provincial Assembly of Balochistan elected Rahila Hameed Khan Durrani as the Speaker of the Assembly on Thursday during 1st sitting of its 23rd session, says Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN) in its Daily Factsheet.

Rahila Durrani was elected unopposed and became the first ever woman to take oath as the Speaker of Balochistan Assembly.

Some key observations are as follows:

Members’ Participation in House Proceedings

• The Balochistan Assembly met for 57 minutes.
• The sitting started at 1209 hours against the scheduled time of 1200 hour.
• Forty-six (68%) lawmakers were present at the start and same number of members (46) was present at the end of the sitting.
• A maximum of 50 (74%) members attended the sitting.
• The Presiding officer took oath from newly elected Speaker during first 10 minutes of the sitting.
• The Speaker chaired the session for 47 minutes.
• The Chief Minister was present in the sitting.
• The Leader of the Opposition attended the entire sitting.
• Parliamentary leaders of ANP, PML-N, NP, PkMAP, MWM, JUI-F and PML attended the sitting.
• One minority member attended the sitting.

Order and Institutionalization

• The House elected Rahila Hameed Khan Durani unopposed as its first ever women Speaker. No other candidate submitted nomination papers to contest against her during the stipulated time of 9am to 10am.
• Eleven lawmakers spoke on floor of the House following the election of the Speaker. These speeches consumed 40 minutes of the proceeding.

Transparency

• ‘Orders of the Day’ was available to the legislators, observers and others.
• Attendance of Members was not made public

To download the factsheet, click here

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