Pakistan: Opposition legislators scale Sindh Assembly gate to attend session

Karachi: A sudden closure of entry points to the Sindh Assembly’s building on Tuesday afternoon locked out a majority of opposition legislators.

However, a few of them took the extreme step of scaling the gate to attend the session.

Speaker Agha Siraj Khan Durrani ordered the police to close the gates after the session started. He gave the unusual order as all of a sudden trumpeters and drummers gathered outside the assembly building. The Speaker deemed that the sanctity of the provincial legislature would be violated if the instruments were played inside the assembly.

The trumpeters and drummers accompanied the leader of opposition Haleem Adil Shaikh and other members of Opposition Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) who assembled outside the building to greet eight lawmakers of the PTI who, a day earlier, were suspended by the Speaker from the current session.

The eight legislators were suspended for bringing a charpoy into the assembly as part of the opposition’s attempt to demonstrate a symbolic “Funeral of democracy”.

The opposition leader and other PTI’s legislators wanted to give a heroic welcome to the eight suspended MPs as, according to them, they were penalised in total disregard to democratic norms. There was a high drama at the gate as rose petals were showered on them. The Speaker’s order to shut the gates triggered a chaotic situation outside the building of the provincial legislature. The opposition legislators, including woman MPs, staged a protest sit-in outside the assembly building as they shouted slogans against the ruling Pakistan Peoples’ Party.

When they started kicking and pushing the gates, police officials intervened to calm them.

At least three male legislators, one of Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) and two of PTI, scaled the gate of the assembly to attend the session. This was the first time that the lawmakers had to use such an unusual method to attend the session.