“A Parliament is that to the Commonwealth which the soul is to the body. It behoves us, therefore, to keep the facility of that soul from distemper.”
–John Pym
Abuse and violence cannot be condoned under any circumstances, least of all on the floor of Parliament. The Lower House was virtually turned into a combat zone with the budget documents flying across, one of which hit a female parliamentarian of the PTI causing serious damage to her eye. Some security personnel also received injuries. It is absolutely imperative that people responsible for perpetrating this mayhem from both sides of the divide should be condemned and duly proceeded against under the rules of the business.
There has also been much condemnation of it in the media, and rightly so, but the cudgels have been pointed mostly in the direction of the PTI and its parliamentarians. This is contrary to the ground realities and reflects a dominant bias that the media often exhibits in judging matters concerning the government and the opposition. While it is willing to look the other way when the parties of the opposition are guilty of committing travesties of the gravest nature, it does not treat the government with even a modicum of that generosity.
With the winds of change blowing across the national expanse and good news warming the hearts, it is impossible that such elements would be able to survive the altered environment where the objective is no longer personal advancement at the cost of the state, but national development and progress in preference to all individual interests. That is the new norm which is likely to blow away the pretentious, false and destructive narrative that this bunch of devious charlatans had imposed on the country and its fate
Notwithstanding the intensity and virulence of the altercations, this is not the first time the Parliament has been afflicted with vitriol. In fact, from the day the Lower House held its first session, it has been subjected to the most vicious and demeaning treatment by the opposition parties by hurling abuse and invectives at the government benches. One still remembers that Imran Khan was not allowed by the parties of the opposition to make his maiden speech as the Prime Minister of the country which heralded the chequered spirit the Parliament has remained afflicted with ever since.
The tradition of exhibiting gross intolerance having started from that first session of the Parliament has, unfortunately, not shown any signs of abating. In fact, it has become an extremely predictable instrument in the hands of the opposition who, after taking their turns at hurling false, fabricated and unsubstantiated abuse at the government benches, walk out of the House when the latter get their turn to speak. This is against the norms and parliamentary traditions. For the sake of generating a healthy and productive debate about the existing issues, the parties across the divide are supposed to listen to what their political opponents have to say so that they could make a positive contribution towards improving the quality and substance of the projected legislation. In the event the parties of the opposition opt to stay away from the debate, they lose their right to criticise the outcome.
Madness it is, but there has been a calculated method driving it also. From the day the tenure of this Parliament started, the opposition’s effort has been directed towards using all methods foul not to let it work according to established rules and regulations. A critical part of that strategy has been not to allow the Prime Minister and his ministers to speak. Whenever such an opportunity arose, they would methodically create a pandemonium in the House. In the process, technically and morally, they also forfeited their own right to speak from the floor. In spite of that, in a spirit of excessive generosity and accommodation, the Speaker allowed time to the opposition to vent their uncorroborated accusations and vitriol. That gave the madness its method: while the parties of the opposition continued to utilise more than their deserved time in the Parliament to project their points of view to the public, the same was denied to the government and its allied parties. This was inherently unjust and untenable. It should also be noted that no media house cared to take note of it and debate what was actually happening in Parliament and who was responsible for it. It was tantamount to condoning the denial of the right to the Prime Minister and his ministers to speak in Parliament.
For quite some time, it was being felt that this strategy had run its wicked course and could not be dragged any further. What we witnessed in the most recent high-voltage demonstration of acrimony and abuse was possibly because the tipping point had long been reached and most of the ruling party parliamentarians had run out of patience. So, when they were provoked in a virulent fashion by a member of the PML(N), they gave way to their own emotions which had been piling for long. Sparks went flying.
In a later development, the parliamentary teams of the opposition and the government held a meeting and, according to a minister, they admitted that “it had brought embarrassment to the House”. The minister further disclosed that the meeting had proposed the formation of “a parliamentary committee comprising members from the treasury and the opposition benches that would be responsible for the conduct of their respective members in the House”. It was also decided that no individual would be targeted and insulted during the budget session from both the treasury and opposition benches.
Like in the past, the opposition did not abide by the letter or spirit of the understanding even for a day. The very next day, they were given full opportunity by the Speaker to pour out their vitriol in abundance through an erroneous and malfeasant narrative. But, exhibiting their traditional, undemocratic and non-parliamentary attitude, they did not have the courage to face the response from the government benches and absorb the logic and sanity that came from across the divide. True to tradition, both the leader of the opposition and Bilawal Zardari, along with their coterie of lackeys and bootleggers, staged an unwarranted walkout. The media failed again in pointing out this crass duplicity in the opposition behaviour.
This is not the first time, and this will not be the last either, when the opposition has violated an agreement it had reached with the government to run Parliament in an organised and disciplined manner where all parties would be heard to improve the content of legislation. This is so because running Parliament has never been the objective of the opposition parties. On the contrary, their principal objective has always been to derail it by sabotaging its work. With time, and with the development indicators of the country across multiple fields continuing to improve with every passing day, their objective now borders on desperation. They are prepared to do everything to see the back of Imran Khan because they fully understand that the success of his government will spell the doom of their brand of politics which is rooted in unabated loot and plunder.
The opposition narrative has lost its traction. They are a hopelessly divided lot, both at the inter-party and intra-party levels. They are also confronted with increased awareness regarding how this country has been brutally and mercilessly ravaged in the past by these gangs of criminals masquerading as politicians. They see the end of their role in defrauding the country of its assets and promise. But they are not gone yet. They are being sustained by the institutions where their recruits, who don’t owe their allegiance to the state but their persons, have continued to survive in a culture of patronage.
With the winds of change blowing across the national expanse and good news warming the hearts, it is impossible that such elements would be able to survive the altered environment where the objective is no longer personal advancement at the cost of the state, but national development and progress in preference to all individual interests. That is the new norm which is likely to blow away the pretentious, false and destructive narrative that this bunch of devious charlatans had imposed on the country and its fate.
