ISLAMABAD: The opposition in the National Assembly continued to remind the government that ceding decision-making power on national issues could only lead to a democratic disaster in the country.

But after two days of browbeating from the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), it was the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf’s (PTI) turn on Saturday to criticise the government for taking a backseat in matters that should be dealt with by elected officials.

“Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah was not a soldier; he was a politician. It is a matter of pride that this country was founded by a politician, not by a military general on horseback,” said PTI’s Ali Mohammad in a short but impassioned speech.

“We respect our army, but all policy decisions should be made here,” he said.

PTI MNA derides Kabul for cosying up to Modi; Nafisa Shah criticises ‘Pakistan’s first offshore budget’

Talking about the role of elected officials, he said that lawmakers were supposed to represent the aspirations of their constituents and were eventually accountable to them, to parliament and to the media. “Can you ask such questions of any general, any judge, any bureaucrat?” he asked, rhetorically.

“Stop abusing politicians ... we are not thieves,” was his message, ostensibly for anti-democratic forces.

He also sent the government benches an ominous message when he asked: “If this parliament is disbanded, where will you go?”

Reading notes from his iPad, the PTI backbencher also took issue with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s cosying up to India. Referring to the Afghan leader’s recent tweet in which he referred to Afghanistan as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘second home’, the lawmaker said, “Mr Ghani, have you forgotten who your ally is? When you were fighting Russia for your freedom, Modi’s country sided with the Russians. We were with you!”

PPP’s Dr Nafisa Shah also took issue with the government’s ‘misplaced’ priorities, saying that while key government figures were seldom seen in parliament, they would snap to attention whenever they received an invite from the General Headquarters.

Wishing Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif a speedy recovery, she mused that “this government also needs immediate surgery”. Asking why Gen Raheel Sharif had to make Pakistan’s case in front of US officials, she asked the government to clarify whether the country, in fact, had a proper foreign minister or not.

She derided the ruling party’s ‘plutocratic’ and ‘secretive’ attitude and their ‘high-handed’ treatment of the provinces and termed this arrogance “the greatest threat to democracy in the country”.

‘Offshore’ budget

“This is a historic budget ... the first in Pakistan’s history to be approved via video link,” she said, adding that since the prime minister was in London when he approved it, it was also the country’s first “offshore budget”.

Stressing the need to produce cheap electricity, she called on the government to reduce its reliance on borrowing. She criticised Finance Minister Ishaq Dar for blaming missed targets and policy failures on external factors, such as the PTI’s sit-in in 2014 and a lacklustre cotton crop this year.

Dr Shah pointed out that the current budget contradicted the objectives laid out in ‘Vision 2025’, the brainchild of Ahsan Iqbal. Praising the plan, she said that provisions in the budget presented by Mr Dar did not line up with the vision of the planning and development minister.

Aasiya Nasir of the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl said that elected representatives should have a greater role in the budget formulation process, and demanded that the finance bill should be discussed threadbare at the standing committee-level.

Uncivil exchanges

Any semblance of civility that may have existed between the government and opposition seemed to have gone out of the window, as lawmakers from both sides of the aisle were relentless in their taunting of the other side.

PTI’s Aquibullah observed tongue-in-cheek that comparing political leaders to animals such as a ‘sher’ was insulting as man was supposed to be the ‘crown of all creation’.

However, Speaker Ayaz Sadiq took issue with the context in which he had spoken and expunged his remarks from the assembly record.

Chaudhry Hamid Hameed, a PML-N member from Sargodha, riled up the PTI when he referred to Sita and Tyrian White as Imran Khan’s “offshore assets”, claiming that he had only acknowledged their ‘ownership’ after a DNA test.

This led to an uproar among PTI members, some of whom stormed out of the house, while Mr Aquibullah pointed to the lack of quorum. This forced Deputy Speaker Murtaza Javed Abbasi to adjourn proceedings until Monday.

Earlier, Mr Hameed had lamented that the pattern of government and opposition speeches was always the same. “The government claims that this is the best budget of the century, while the opposition insists that it is the worst budget of the century. No opposition, be it the US or UK, is ever satisfied with the government’s budget.”

Published in Dawn, June 12th, 2016