Opposition walkout, shouts greet budget in parliament
By Raja Asghar
ISLAMABAD, June 5: Opposition walkouts and protest shouts greeted the new federal budget on Monday, interrupting a politically charged budget speech of Minister of State for Finance Omar Ayub Khan.
The combined opposition staged a token walkout first in the National Assembly and later in the Senate to protest against alleged leak of budget proposals to the media before the budget speech, political victimisation of opposition leaders and military operations in North Waziristan.
But intermittent shouting of “no, no” and “lies” amid repeated desk-thumping by ruling party members was confined to the lower house, reaching a crescendo at the fag-end of the proceedings with “sugar thieves, leave us” chant that blamed the scarcity and high prices of sugar on sugars mills owned by ruling party members.
The protests were in keeping with the opposition practice in recent years at budget presentations and were allowed by National Assembly Speaker Chaudhry Amir Hussain and Senate Chairman Mohammedmian Soomro apparently to avoid more noisy and unmanageable scenes that had marked the first year of the present parliament.
Opposition leader in the National Assembly Maulana Fazlur Rehman said the budget was supposed to be a secret document before its announcement and that the finance minister — a portfolio held by the prime minister himself — should resign for the ‘crime’ of disclosing budget proposals that had been broadcast by various television channels earlier in the day.
People’s Party Parliamentarians chairman Amin Fahim recorded his protest against a new charge brought against former prime minister Benazir Bhutto by the National Accountability Bureau for allegedly concealing her assets from the Election Commission in 1996. He described it as a sign of the government’s nervousness on signing of charter of democracy last month.
Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz parliamentary leader Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan raised the issue of absence of his party’s jailed acting president Javed Hashmi and said: “Those who should have been inside (jail) are sitting on government benches and those who should have been here are behind the bars”.
Similar protests were made in the Senate by parliamentary leaders Raza Rabbani of the PPP, Ishaq Dar of the PML-N and Prof Khurshid Ahmed of the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal before the opposition’s walkout when Omar Ayub Khan laid the Finance Bill before the upper house.
The MMA leader referred to Sunday’s imposition of indefinite curfew in the North Waziristan town of Miranshah after clashes between security forces and suspected militants and said there seemed to be a move to sabotage a possible peace plan of the newly appointed governor of the NWFP who was also overseeing the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.
Pointed attacks of Mr Omar Ayub’s in his speech in the National Assembly on the previous PPP and PML-N governments and his claims of achievements after President Pervez Musharraf took power in 1999 provoked opposition legislators who chanted “no, no” and “lies”, hinting at possible angrier exchanges when the lower house meets again at 5pm on Thursday for a general debate on the budget.
The Senate, which will meet on Wednesday at 10am, will only prepare its recommendations on the budget that may, or may not, be accepted by the National Assembly.
