ISLAMABAD: The lawmakers, mostly the back benchers, got an opportunity to deliver speeches in the National Assembly on Thursday after the government’s decision to wind up the seven-day general debate on the federal budget on Friday (today), instead of Thursday.

The members as well as the reporters waited till evening for the scheduled winding-up speech of Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin, but later they came to know that the minister would now make it on Friday morning (today) after which the debate on the opposition-moved cut motions would begin.

As usual, the members from both sides of the aisle continued to deliver political speeches and kept on attacking each other’s leadership, thus creating rumpus in the house on a couple of occasions. The treasury members in their speeches held the past governments responsible for the present state of affairs in the country and the opposition members continued to call the rulers “inefficient, inexperienced and incompetent”.

The members of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) and the Mutta­hida Qaumi Movement (MQM) in their speeches targeted the PPP’s government in Sindh and accused it of not doing anything for the people and neglecting Karachi and Hyderabad.

The house witnessed ruckus when PTI MNA from Karachi Faheem Khan while mentioning the incidents of dog biting in Sindh, stated that “there is a rule of dogs in the province which will be eliminated after two years”.

Tarin to wind up budget debate today

A number of PPP lawmakers stood up and protested over the remarks forcing the chair to expunge them from the proceedings. However, the PTI MNA repeated his remarks, insisting that he had said nothing wrong.

PPP’s Agha Rafiullah while responding to Mr Khan’s remarks said the lawmaker had in fact “insulted” the people of Sindh.

“We now have enough vaccines for dog biting cases, give us the names of the dogs and we will give it to them,” said Mr Rafiullah, prompting a noisy protest from the treasury members, who wanted to respond to the PPP MNA, but the chair intelligently den­ied the floor to any of them, and averted the situation from getting worse.

Both Faheem Khan and Agha Rafiullah were among those seven legislators whose entry had been banned by the speaker last week for creating rowdyism in the house at the start of the budget debate.

Taking part in the debate, Federal Minister for Inter-Provincial Coordination Dr Fehmida Mirza also came hard on the Sindh government, alleging that it was not completing a number of development projects despite the fact that it had already acquired the allocated funds.

Dr Mirza, a PPP dissident, said the Sindh government was blaming the federal government over the National Finance Commission (NFC) issue to “only hide its incompetence”.

Dr Mirza was effectively responded by PPP MNA from Naushahro Feroze Abrar Ali Shah.

Situation in Afghanistan

Hina Rabbani Khar of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) regretted that the government was neither briefing the house nor its foreign relations committee about the situation in Afghanistan which was getting out of control in the wake of recent developments.

“Yesterday there was a blast in Lahore. You must have seen the reports that Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has re-appointed its shadow governors. You must have seen the news that Taliban have taken over the control of Afghanistan-Tajikistan border…..and there are reports that at least 50 per cent of the area is under the Taliban’s control,” said Ms Khar, who had also served as the minister of state for foreign affairs during the previous PPP government that ended in 2013.

“Now should that not raise alarm for a country which shares 2,600-km long border with that country (Afghanistan)? Should it not raise alarm bells for a country which had seen the spillover of Afghanistan that came to Pakistan through our borders and killed our children? Should we forget the APS (Army Public School)?” she kept on asking.

The budget had been prepared by those officials of the finance ministry who were there even in 2002, recalled Ms Khar, who was also a member of the cabinet of the military-led civilian government of dictator retired Gen Pervez Musharraf.

PML-N’s Marriyum Aurangzeb lashed out at the government for not fulfilling any of its promises, including construction of five million houses and provision of 10 million jobs. She also accused the government of trying to further curb press freedom thr­o­ugh the proposed Pakistan Media Regulatory Authority (PMRA).

Ms Aurangzeb categorically declared that her party would not support the Elections (Amendment) bill suggesting the use of electronic voting machines (EVMs) in the country. She alleged that the government wanted to introduce EVMs as it had a firm belief that the people would reject it in the next elections. She said in the recent by-polls in Daska, the officials of the ECP were picked up to change the results and after introduction of the EVMs, the presiding officers would only be required to change the chip of the machine.

Ms Aurangzeb said through the bill the government wanted to strip the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) from its constitutional powers and give it to Nadra (National Data­base and Registration Authority).

“We will not let this bill passed from the assembly,” she declared.

Published in Dawn, June 25th, 2021