ISLAMABAD, June 26, 2019: The major portion of the Balochistan Assembly’s proceedings was consumed in debate on the provincial budget 2019-20 on Wednesday, says Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN) in its Daily Factsheet.

Following are key observations of the House proceedings during fifth sitting of the budget (14^th) session:

Members’ Participation

• The House met for ten hours and five minutes. However, proceedings remained suspended for two hours and 19 minutes due to lunch and prayer breaks.
• The sitting started at 1210 hours against the scheduled time of 1100 hours.
• The Speaker did not attend the sitting.
• The Deputy Speaker presided over the entire sitting.
• The Leader of the House and the Leader of the Opposition attended the entire proceedings.
• As many as 29 MPAs (44%) were present at the outset and 38 (58%) at the adjournment of the sitting.
• The parliamentary leaders of JWP, ANP, PkMAP, BAP, MMAP and HDP attended the proceedings.
• Two out of three minority lawmakers attended the proceedings.

Representation and Responsiveness

• Twenty lawmakers participated in general discussion on annual budget consuming six hours and 25 minutes (64%) of the proceedings.

• The House did not take up the remaining agenda including Demands for Grants related to different departments.

Order and Institutionalization

• As Many as 14 lawmaker raised Point of Orders consuming 61 minutes of the proceedings.
• The oppositions staged walkout from the proceedings twice against unjustified allocation of budget for various areas and criticism on JUI-F leader at social media.
• The House was adjourned to meet again on June 27, 2019 (Thursday) at 1100 hours.

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