Juvenile behaviour in a chaotic house.

'Juvenile' was the word that kept resonating in my mind while watching the conduct of our worthy senators Tuesday evening.

To begin with, this itself was an embarrassing fact that the upper house of our parliament had been called for a meeting after a long gap of around forty days. This gap clearly conveyed that the Imran Government could conveniently continue running the governance-related business, above and beyond an elected parliament.

The Senate, ostensibly considered an institution 'affirming the federal credentials' of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, looked doubly redundant in this context. And no one seemed really pushed about it.

Yet, to be fair to our number-strong opposition, one has to concede that it indeed had forced the government to summon the Senate session through posting and pressing the requisition.

Following the regular practice, the government and the opposition senators did hold a meeting to set the agenda and the timeline of the summoned session, before the commencement of its first sitting Tuesday. Apparently, they had agreed to continue meeting for ten working days, but only to facilitate the focused and exhaustive discussion on issues that the opposition had flagged to justify the need of summoning the Senate session.

At the outset of the sitting, however, Raza Rabbani of the PPP took the floor to wail over the enforcement of not one but five Ordinances that the government had introduced through the President's office. It is but obvious that taking advantage of its numerical edge in the Senate, the combined opposition is determined to reject all those ordinances. How and when to go about it was the question. The government was simply not willing to commit a word about it.

Azam Swati, the minister of parliamentary affairs, rather kept reminding the opposition that during their terms in the government, they too were relying upon Ordinances to introduce the laws of their preferences. Shibli Faraz, the Leader of the House, preferred to tease and taunt with mocking grins.

Salim Mandwiwallah, the Deputy Chairman, failed to handle the chaos. He suspended the house for fifteen minutes. Ms Sitara Imtiaz took over the presiding chair when the house resumed and she had come there, primarily to adjourn the sitting until Wednesday afternoon.

The anxiously awaited sitting of the upper house of parliament was thus over and done with, without dealing with a single item put on the agenda.

The collective behaviour of our senators...