April 24, 2008	Thursday	Rabi-us-Sani 17, 1429

ISLAMABAD, April 23: Parliamentarians from Pakistan and Afghanistan have called for setting up joint oversight committees.

“Policies adopted by the two countries to manage terrorism need to be driven by the aspirations of the people and not of foreign countries and donors. Members of parliament are in the best position to ensure that governmental policies respect wishes of the people of the two countries,” they said.

Addressing the concluding session of the workshop on ‘Key challenges in parliamentary oversight’ organised by the Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency (Pildat) here on on Wednesday, parliamentarians from both countries put forward 26 recommendations.

Afghan MPs also called for granting the Afghan media broadcast rights in Pakistan.

Federal Minister for Finance Senator Ishaq Dar urged the parliamentarians to jointly fend off threats faced by parliaments. “Every so often we have seen parliaments being dismissed and dissolved, followed by long spells of non-representative governments.

While we seek compliance of all state organs to submit to the will of the people and respect the supremacy of the parliament, we have to resolve to settle our differences within parliament.

We should not be looking anywhere else in our quest to regain the ground that we may have lost in the electoral battle field,” he said.

Mr Dar said the overreaching aim of a participatory system of governance was to work for the welfare of people in accordance with their aspirations, adding that parliament was not only supposed to make laws but one of its key roles was “oversight on the functioning of government and the state of governance”.

Senator Dar believed that the budget-making process needed to be made transparent by strengthening the standing committees, which could play a more effective monitoring role.

Federal Minister for Privatisation and Investment Naveed Qamar said all coalition parties had agreed to debate the defence budget in parliament. He said that the part of the budget which was presented in parliament, the finance bill, including taxation measures, “does not go through normal legislative process”.

“This bill often contains controversial subjects which the government would like passed without any debate.”

He said significant changes would occur during the presentation of budget. He said a very short time was given for debating the expenditure in Pakistan, whereas in India, the budget was presented early in February and passed provisionally, and finally approved in June after comprehensive discussion.

Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly Faisal Karim Kundi also addressed the meeting.