ISLAMABAD, November 23, 2017: The Punjab Assembly did not take up its regular business due to low attendance of the lawmakers on Friday, observes Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN) in its Daily Factsheet.

Following are key observations of the House proceedings during second sitting of the 33^rd session:

Members’ Participation

• The Punjab Assembly met for an hour and 36 minutes while the proceedings remained suspended for 55 minutes due to low attendance of lawmakers.
• The sitting started at 1032 hours against the scheduled time 0900 hours.
• The Speaker presided over the entire sitting while the Deputy Speaker was not present.
• The Chief Minister did not attend the sitting.
• The Leader of the Opposition attended the proceedings for 17 minutes.
• As many as five MPAs (1%) were present at outset and 44 (12%) at adjournment of the sitting.
• None of the parliamentary leaders attended the sitting.
• Only one minority lawmaker was present.

Output

• The House did not take up the legislative business appearing on the Orders of the Day.
• Moved by a PML-N lawmaker, the House adopted a supplementary resolution recommending the government to include the subject of the finality of prophethood in the curriculum for students.

Representation and Responsiveness

• Only one out of 13 Starred Questions was answered during the proceedings while eight Starred Questions were disposed of due to absence of the movers and four were deferred. A lawmaker asked one supplementary question as well. The proceedings remained suspended for 27 minutes during the Question Hour due to absence of concerned lawmakers.

Order and Institutionalization

• The lawmakers raised 12 Points of Order consuming 14 minutes of the proceedings.
• The opposition parties staged a walkout from the proceedings at 1126 hours to record their protest over the trend of Black Friday sales in the country. They returned to the House at the time of voting on the above-mentioned supplementary resolution and left the House again after the voting.
• A PTI lawmaker pointed out the quorum at 1132 hours that led to the suspension of the proceedings for 28 minutes. However, the quorum was still incomplete on resumption of the proceedings and the sitting was adjourned to meet again on Monday (November 27, 2017) at 1400 hours.

Transparency

• ‘Orders of the Day’ was available to the legislators, observers and public.
• Information on Members’ attendance is available on Punjab Assembly’s website.

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The daily factsheet is based on direct observation of the Punjab Assembly proceedings conducted by PATTAN Development Organization – a member organization of FAFEN. Errors and omissions are regretted.