ISLAMABAD, June 11: Former prime minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali told the National Assembly on Saturday he saved it by resigning his office last year as he distanced himself more from the ruling coalition during the lower house’s general debate on the budget for fiscal 2005-06.

But he gave no details of the still unexplained circumstances of his surprise resignation as prime minister on June 26, 2004, after being in office for 19 months and two days after the National Assembly had passed his government’s second

budget.

“I had resigned, I was not removed,” he said in his speech on the first budget of his successor Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz’s nine-month-old government, which received more brickbats than bouquets on the third day of the debate, including a stinging speech by Aitzaz Ahsan of the People’s Party Parliamentarians (PPP).

“If I had not resigned, there would have been no (National) Assembly or prime minister today,” Mr Jamali added, apparently suggesting his staying in office would have invited dissolution of the National Assembly and even something more that would have blocked the election of a new lower house and a prime minister until now.

The ex-premier’s remarks rekindled speculation about reasons for his resignation following a row within the ruling Pakistan Muslim League (PML) last month over whether he was still a member of the party and came only three days after the already denied rumours about his successor’s resignation hit the country’s stock market on Wednesday.

Mr Jamali, whose position as a senior figure of the PML was re-established after President Pervez Musharraf held a meeting with top party leaders, used the budget debate to criticize the government for what he called non-implementation of some plans approved by his government, privatization of profit-making enterprises like the Pakistan Telecommunication Company Ltd and planned import of food items from India.

But he praised President Musharraf and referred to what he called an “unimaginable prestige” he enjoyed abroad.

Mr Jamali said a minister told him on being asked about merit in selling profitable units that he was compelled to support privatization.

He said his government had approved a highway in Jacobabad and some water and gas supply schemes for which allocated amounts were lying in banks but had not been implemented because his government was no longer there. He requested Prime Minister Aziz to ensure implementation of these schemes.

Mr Jamali also urged the federal government to accede to smaller provinces’ demands for increase in their share in the National Finance Commission award that has remained stalled for three years.