Daily Times

LAHORE: Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI-F) Naeema Kishwer has left behind to prominent politicians and leaders of political parties into the race of “MNAs’ Scorecard for 2015-2016” to attained the first position – with highest score of 70%.

As many as 308 National Assembly Members (MNA) have attained ranks or positions between 1 and 39 in a systematic assessment of individual parliamentary performance report by Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency (PILDAT) – which was released on Wednesday.

While, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, Speaker and Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly, federal ministers, ministers of state and leader of the opposition have not been included in the assessment exercise as their powers and functions differ greatly from that of a regular Member of the National Assembly.

Based on performance indicators of individual MNAs during the third parliamentary year (June 2015-May 2016), the overall average score stands at 38% – as compared to the average performance score of Senators at 41% in a similar score card on Senators’ performance by PILDAT.

It’s pertinent to mentioned here that JUI bags highest percentage (100%) of top performing MNAs among top 15 positions. While highest percentage (23%) of MNAs among top 15 position holders belong to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and overall average score of MNAs is 38% (compared to 41% of Senators) and average attendance of individual MNAs in Plenary Sessions of National Assembly stands at 61% (compared to 63% in the Senate).

However, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan, PPP Women Wing President MNA Faryal Talpur, and PML-N central leader MNA Hamza Shahbaz Sharif among MNAs were the lowest with overall score of 20% and scored 39th position. While MQM Senior Deputy Convenor Farooq Sattar has attained an overall score of 22% with 38th position (second last rank).

Similarly, former speaker National Assembly PPP Fehmida Mirza also attained an overall score of 22%. Former prime minister of Pakistan Zafarullah Khan Jamali attained an overall score of 27% – which is the 35th position.

PML Punjab President and former Chief Minister Punjab Chaudhry Pervaiz Ellahi also attained an overall score of 27% while JUI-F President and Parliamentary Leader Maulana Fazalur Rehman attained an overall score of 35% – which is the 30th position.

Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party (PMAP) President Mehmood Khan Achakzai has scored an overall score of 36% with 29th position which is also shared by PTI Vice-Chairman Shah Mahmood Qureshi. Awami Muslim League President Sheikh Rashid Ahmed attained an overall score of 39% and 26th position alongside PTI Shafqat Mehmood.

Further, Arif Alvi of PTI attained an overall score of 43%, which is the 22nd position while PPP Shazia Marri has received overall score of 46% with 19th position. PTI leader Asad Umar attained an overall score of 47% which is the 18th position. PPPP Parliamentary Leader Syed Naveed Qamar attained an overall score of 51% with the 14th position.

Following MNAs have attained Top 10 Ranks including JUI-F Naeema Kishwar Khan from KP with 70% overall score, MQM MNA Muhammad Muzammil Qureshi from NA-253 Karachi-XV with 67% overall score, JIP Sher Akbar Khan (NA-28 Bunair) with 65% overall score, MQM Nikhat Shakeel Khan (Sindh) with 63% overall score, PPP Shahida Rehmani with 63% overall score, JIP Aisha with 62% overall score, PPP Shazia Sobia with 60% overall score, JIP Sahibzada Tariq Ullah with 60%.

It is interesting to note that 9 out of 14 MNAs occupying the top 10 ranks have Women and all of them belong to the category of Reserved Seats for Women in the NA.

The performance scorecards by PILDAT focused on 3 main aspects of the parliamentary role of an MNA: Oversight, Legislation and Representation. All top performers of the three categories are Women parliamentarians.

The top performer in ‘Oversight’ has Naeema Kishwer Khan with an average score of 3.4 out of 5. Although she chaired no committee, she is a member of four (4) committees and presented two resolutions, 11 Calling Attention Notices and 134 Questions in the House during the year.

As well as, the top performer in ‘Legislation’ was MQM Nikhat Shakeel Khan with a total of 8 Private Member’s Bills introduced in the National Assembly during the year. Meanwhile, the top performers in ‘Representation’ have MNA Naseema Hafeez Panezai and JUI-F MNA Aliya Kamran with the highest attendance of 100% in the plenary sessions of the NA. Methodology and Framework of assessing the performance of 308 MNAs out of a total strength of 339 (at the time of data collection) was developed indigenously by PILDAT.

The data for preparing the score cards was obtained from one main public source – official website of the National Assembly of Pakistan. MNAs themselves were also contacted to provide individual data.

Assessment criteria and framework were seriously constrained by availability of data. Many parameters such as the talk time in the Plenary Sittings and Attendance in Parliamentary Committee Meetings could not be included in our assessment framework as no data was available on the Assembly website while the National Assembly secretariat remained non-responsive to all specific requests made for obtaining data. Despite the limitations in data – PILDAT believes that this score card constitutes a reasonable beginning to build on in the future.

These score cards seek to provide the citizens of Pakistan with some critical information in order to empower them to monitor their elected representatives and to identify the prospective future political leadership of Pakistan.

In the report PILDAT stated that objective behind PILDAT’s evaluation exercise was to promote Transparency and Democratic Accountability of Elected representatives by citizens and to help in Mapping Exercise of Future Political Leadership of Pakistan.

This is a first attempt made by PILDAT to assess and rank the performance of MNAs, and hence, may have a lot of room for improvement. PILDAT will welcome comments and suggestions for improvement in the concept, methodology and framework of assessment and presentation of the MNAs’ Score Cards.