ISLAMABAD, December 17, 2019: The Provincial Assembly of Balochistan did not take up any agenda except question hour due to lack of quorum on Tuesday, observes Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN) in its Daily Factsheet.

Following are key observations of the House proceedings during first sitting of the 18^th session:

 Members’ Participation

• The House met for three hours and nine minutes, however, the proceedings remained suspended for 34 minutes due to prayer break.
• The sitting started at 1641 hours against the scheduled time of 1600 hours.
• The Deputy Speaker presided over the entire proceedings in the absence of Speaker.
• The Leader of the House attended the sitting for one minute.
• The Leader of the Opposition attended the entire sitting.
• As many as 12 MPAs (18%) were present at the outset and 11 (17%) at the adjournment of the sitting.
• The parliamentary leaders of BAP, ANP, BNP-M, PkMAP, HDP and MMAP attended the proceedings.
• Two out of three minority lawmakers attended the proceedings.

Output

• The House did not consider three reports of the standing committees on as many legislative proposals.

Representation and Responsiveness

• The House took up six out of nine starred questions while the lawmakers asked ten supplementary questions as well.

Order and Institutionalization

• Twelve lawmakers spoke on Points of Order for an hour and 40 minutes.
• A BNP-M lawmaker pointed out the quorum at 1949 hours which led to the adjournment of sitting after counting.
• The House was adjourned to meet again on December 20, 2019 (Friday) 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.

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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