Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: Provincial Assembly of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa made itself a spectacle of collective misogyny on Tuesday when the provincial minister for public health engineering and prominent member of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf used extremely derogatory and abusive words against Nighat Orakzai, a woman lawmaker from Pakistan People’s Party.

According to details, the spat between Shah Farman and Nighat Orakzai started when debate was going on among the male members about distribution of development funds with respect to the department and the constituency. When Nighat Orakzai tried to speak on the issue out of turn, she was asked to wait for the debate to conclude. Upon the request of Meraj Hamayun, a Member from Qaumi Watan Party and chairperson of KP’s Women’s Parliamentary Caucus, Deputy Speaker Mehrtaj Roghani – who was chairing the session – gave the floor to two women.

Zareen Zia of PTI pointed out objectionable remarks by the prime minister about women, a day earlier, while Nighat Orakzai referred to a news story about the development funds reportedly given to the male members. Just when she was making the demand for equal amount of funds for women lawmakers in case such funds were indeed being given to male colleagues, Shah Farman interrupted her by elusive comments with innuendo. On this, Nighat Orakzai stood up and started protesting. The scene took an ugly turn when the minister was heard using expletives/abusive words against her parents, besides racist comments.

Nighat Orakzai while talking to Daily Times expressed her sheer disappointment and annoyance over the way all the male members from all parties reacted to it by laughing and, at one point, desk thumping. Even the women members of the PTI who were a while ago raising concerns about PM’s derogatory remarks against women did not bother to stand with her, she said. She said only a few women members from the PML-N, ANP and JUIF stood up against this verbal humiliation and attempt to physically assault her by a sitting minister using the floor of the House. Nighat Orakzai has long been raising the issue of unequal treatment of men and women while allocating development funds and even the development schemes under the CM’s Discretionary Funds.

Meraj Hamayun while talking to Daily Times expressed her outrage over the incident and said such humiliation of women would not be acceptable, and a strong protest would be lodged until the minister apologised unconditionally. She said that development funds were not being distributed among members after the establishment of the local governments.

Shah Farman told Daily Times that he was provoked by the aggressive attitude of Nighat Orakzai who had approached his desk and “initiated the spat unnecessarily”. He expressed his regret over the ‘unfortunate but unintentional incident’ and told Daily Times that he was eating his words unconditionally in order to honour women.

However, he said, this was ‘staged mainly to balance the motion by PTI women against the anti-women remarks of the PM’. Minutes before this conversation between this scribe and Shah Farman, Imran Khan had posted a tweet about the incident, “unacceptable for legislator to insult any woman. Goes ag[ainst] our religion & culture. Apology has come. If it happens again action will be taken”. Sources inside the provincial assembly informed this scribe that the speaker of the assembly upon receiving the report about the squabble, tried to contact PTI chairman but his call was not returned.

This was not the first time when Pakistan’s lawmakers insulted their women colleagues. In January, a provincial minister of Sindh, Imdad Pitafi, had used objectionable remarks with innuendo against fellow lawmaker Nusrat Seher Abbasi. Before that, Defence Minister Khawaja Asif ridiculed PTI’s member Shireen Mazari, followed shortly by Khawaja Saad Rafiq who used a similar innuendo against Mazari. Weeks ago, leader of opposition in the National Assembly, Syed Khurshid Shah, used gender stereotypes while describing women. More recently, the prime minister alluded contemptuously to the dynamic and enthusiastic participation of women members of the PTI in a recent rally.

The most disappointing observation in all these manifestations of sheer misogyny has been that male members received all these jibes on women with an approving laughter. In case of PML-N, not even women members had ever protested against their party leaders’ gender insensitivity.