ISLAMABAD, June 12: The Senate on Monday witnessed uproars during the day-long proceedings when treasury senators rejected 15 motions of the opposition seeking cut in the budgetary allocations for defence services and some other state institutions through voice vote.
Rejecting the opposition senators’ demand to reduce the defence budget for the next financial year or to freeze it at the revised estimates for previous financial, the treasury senators said that Pakistan was still facing a threat from India, which was constantly increasing its military budget.
Opposition members also staged a walkout and refused to listen to the speech of Minister of State for Finance Omar Ayub Khan who had been given the floor by the Senate chairman after all motions had been rejected. Opposition members also raised slogans like “say no to military budget,” “say no to deficit budget,” “say no to anti-people budget” and “we reject the budget” before staging the walkout, forcing the chairman to adjourn the sitting abruptly till Tuesday evening.
Earlier, speaking in favour of the motions, parliamentary leader of the Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) Ishaq Dar said the system of a “one-line defence budget” should be abolished and at least the revenue part of the defence budget must be brought to the parliament. He said the defence budget should be placed before the parliament for a thorough debate so that they could save maximum resources for the poor masses.
People’s Party Parliamentarians (PPP) Senator Raza Rabbani regretted that the rulers had made Pakistan into a complete security state. He questioned the rationale behind the decision to increase the defence budget at a time when Pakistan and India were announcing confidence-building measures.
He said there should be accountability of every institution, including the army.
He regretted the army was even demanding Rs1 billion as charges for its services during the earthquake relief operation.
Another PPP Senator Enver Baig predicted if they continued to increase the allocation in the same manner then next year’s defence budget would go up to Rs310 billion.
He said, on the one hand, the poor people did not have clean drinking water and, on the other, the government was making huge allocations for defence needs.
PPP Senator Rukhsana Zuberi said there was no moral and constitutional justification in increasing the defence budget as several military-run institutions like the Frontier Works Organisation, Army Welfare Trust and Fauji Foundation were revenue-generating entities for the Pakistan Army.
Dr Babar Awan of the PPP said if the military wanted to rule the country then it must be ready to face accountability.
He said the demand of the army’s accountability should have come from the treasury benches who talked about giving a constitutional role to the army.
Raza Mohammad Raza of the Pakhtoonkhwa Milli Awami Party said army men were setting up bakeries and industries and they could meet their expenses on their own. Despite this, he said, the burden of the pension of military personnel was on civilians.
Responding to the opposition’s points, Leader of the House Wasim Sajjad said that today the relations with India were good and tomorrow it might not be so.
He said that they could discuss the defence budget but could not disclose the area-wise specification of allocations due to security reasons.
Federal Minister for Education and former head of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Lt-Gen (retd) Javed Ashraf Qazi said there had been no “substantial progress” in Pakistan-India peace talks and these were limited on mere exchanges of delegations.
He said India was increasing its defence budget every year and continued to be a threat for Pakistan. He called for further increasing the defence budget.
Through separate motions opposition senators had also demanded reduction and withdrawal of budgetary allocations for the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) and the National Security Council (NSC).
Dr Safdar Abbasi of the PPP said the NSC had become a supra-constitutional body as it by-passed the cabinet and the parliament.
He criticised Gen Musharraf for presiding over the NSC meeting in military uniform.
He said the NSC had no role to play and, therefore, the proposed budgetary allocation for it should be withdrawn.
Opposing the motion, Federal Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Dr Sher Afgan said that military officers attended meetings of the NSC even in India and the US.
He said military personnel could only give recommendations as the final authority to take decision was the parliament or the government.
