ISLAMABAD, June 14: Army’s top brass came under more than usual opposition flak in the National Assembly on Thursday during the general debate on the new national budget for their perceived backing of the political role of President Pervez Musharraf.
On the third day of the budget debate, the opposition parties also walked out twice to protest against the reported detention of hundreds of their activists in Punjab and the death of one of them in a Lahore jail.
Criticism of army generals and the latest increase in the defence budget mainly came from the People's Party Parliamentarians and the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) against the backdrop of a recent corps commanders’ conference that appeared to back President Musharraf in his standoff with opposition parties and lawyers in the prevailing judicial crisis.
“We salute those soldiers of the Pak army who are defending (the country’s) frontiers, but a few generals are destroying this institution,” PPP member Ms Naheed Khan said during the morning session.“We will not let this happen,” she said, adding that a PPP government in the future would bring the defence budget before parliament for scrutiny.
“We respect the Pakistan Army if it works as an institution, but if they ... -- five generals -- will play politics, then we would also demand account of their budget,” said Ms Khan, who is also the political secretary to former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.
PML-N’s Khwaja Mohammad Asif, who spoke in the assembly’s afternoon sitting, accused
President Musharraf of using the army and the ruling PML as his constituencies without trusting them and also called for making the defence budget and the earnings of the military’s large business organisations transparent.
PPP’s Chaudhry Manzoor Hussain PML-N’s Saad Rafiq questioned the justification for increasing the defence budget when, according to him, there was no danger of a war with India.
But some ruling party members defended the defence budget increase, with Mrs Zeb Gohar Ayub, wife of former foreign minister Gohar Ayub Khan, calling for even more funds to enable the military to buy conventional weapons in the face of new Indian acquisitions like heavy guns, tanks, missiles and jets.
All opposition parties staged their first token walkout in the morning sitting after PPP’s Naheed Khan and Tasnim Qureshi complained of continuing detention of party activists in Punjab ahead of a planned visit to Faisalabad by the Supreme Court Chief Justice on June 16.
The second walkout came in the evening after Naheed Khan told the house that PPP’s detained Gujrat district finance secretary Sarwar Maqsood had died in Lahore’s Kot Lakhpat jail on Thursday because of severe heat and called for a halt to detaining and jailing activists in Punjab.
MMA’s deputy parliamentary leader Liaquat Baloch also protested against what he called a Punjab government crackdown which, he said, would further increase political tensions.
The opposition received an unexpected support from PML member Farooq Amjad Mir who said he and his colleagues supported the demand for the release of detained activists and expressed his grief over the death of the PPP member in jail.
“Political workers should be respected and encouraged,” said Mr Mir, who is reported to have political differences with Punjab Chief Minister Chaudhry Pervez Elahi.
Nearly 40 members from both sides spoke on Thursday to a poorly-attended house, which also saw Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz making his rare appearances twice.
