ISLAMABAD, May 19, 2021: The requisitioned session of Provincial Assembly of Balochistan took up its entire agenda and passed a resolution to condemn Israeli aggression in Palestine, says Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN) in its Daily Factsheet on Wednesday.

Following are key observations of the House proceedings during 1st and last sitting of the 37th session:

Members’ Participation

• The House met for four hours and 17 minutes.
• The sitting started at 05:03 pm against the scheduled time of 04:00 pm.
• The speaker did not attend the session.
• The deputy speaker presided over the sitting for three hours and 17 minutes while the remaining sitting was chaired by a member of panel of chairpersons.
• The leader of the house (chief minister) attended the sitting for 55 minutes.
• The leader of the opposition attended the entire sitting.
• As many as 20 (31 percent) legislators were present at the start and 13 (20 percent) at the end of the sitting.
• All three minority member were present.
• The parliamentary leaders of BNP-M, BAP, PkMAP and MMAP attended the sitting.

Output

• The House unanimously adopted a resolution condemning Israeli aggression in Palestine. Seven lawmakers spoke on it for 40 minutes.

Representation and Responsiveness 

• Nine lawmakers participated in debate on pre-budget, development growth in the province, the government strategy to tackle situation after coronavirus and law and order situation. All these matters were included in agenda and lawmakers spoke in it for three hours and 20 minutes.

Order and Institutionalization

• A PkMAP’s lawmaker spoke on a point of order for seven minutes which was regarding the absence of Inspector General of Police and Chief secretary in the galleries despite Chair’s ruling.
• The session was prorogued sine die.

Transparency

• ‘List of Business’ was available to the legislators, observers and others.
• The attendance of 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