ISLAMABAD, Feb 21: The Senate started deliberations on the law reforms bill on Wednesday after winding up a debate on the next year’s budget. Over 20 senators, from both sides of the divide, expressed their views on budget-making and gave proposals to improve the process.

The end of the first-ever pre-budget debate coincided with an announcement by the PPP Parliamentarians that they would boycott the upper house in protest against the government’s refusal to register an FIR over the attempt on the life of a woman lawmaker — Ms Azra — who is a member of the People’s Party.

The opposition lawmakers criticised, what they termed, the government’s lopsided privatisation policy. They called for a total freeze or a substantial cut in defence expenditures, increase in direct taxation and handing over of tax collection to the provinces.

They said the government had promised to spend the privatisation proceeds on debt servicing and reduction of poverty, but had taken no initiative to fulfil the promise. The senators said it was high time that defence spending were frozen at a certain level to spare funds for the poor.

The lawmakers said unless power prices were reduced, Pakistan’s manufactured goods would not be able to compete in the international market.

Before announcing a boycott of the session, Mian Raza Rabbani, said: “We are trying to get an FIR registered over the attack on the life of an MNA ever since Feb 16, but in vain.”

He alleged that a state within a state was being run in urban Sindh and it appears the federal government had no control over its own party-run government.

S.M. Zafar, a parliamentarian from the treasury bench, presented a report of a special committee hearing petitions by government officers hailing from Sindh, Balochistan and the NWFP that the promotion process was not transparent.