ISLAMABAD: The government on Friday found the National Assembly a much better place than in recent past as, in the presence of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, it broke through a legislative blockage and received only a mild rap over the new budget from Leader of Opposition Khursheed Ahmed Shah.

But Mr Shah, who opened the general debate on the budget for fiscal year 2014-15, could have reserved a harder lashing in the second part of his speech on Monday if he goes ahead with his threat to begin a hunger strike outside the Parliament House to protect thousands of employees of state organisations reinstated by the previous PPP-led government from feared retrenchment by the present government.

The debate on the budget, which was unveiled by Finance Minister Ishaq Dar on Tuesday, opened after the house adopted three bills, as amended by the Senate, without any fuss to give the one-year-old government its first legislations approved by both houses of parliament.

House adopts three bills without fuss

The bills, including one amending the Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997, to empower grade-17 equivalent officials or a duty magistrate to order the opening of fire on terrorism suspects, were among five cleared by the opposition-controlled Senate on Wednesday after being stuck up there for a long time following their passage by the government-controlled 342-seat National Assembly.

Now they need only a formal presidential assent to become laws.

The other two bills passed on Friday amend the Legal Practitioners and Bar Councils Act, 1973 – to provide for a separate bar council for Islamabad, as necessitated by the establishment of the Islamabad High Court – and the Service Tribunals Act, 1973 – to prescribe a procedure for appointing the chairman and members of a federal service tribunal as for the judiciary.

The opposition’s majority in the 104-seat Senate has been responsible for the government’s failure to get any of its bills though the upper house until Wednesday’s breakthrough credited to behind-the-scene contacts between the two sides.

Mainly as a result of a recent understanding between the prime minister and former president Asif Ali Zardari (on behalf of the opposition PPP), the two sides are also negotiating on further opposition amendments to the most controversial anti-terrorism law, the Protection of Pakistan Bill, which remains blocked in the Senate after the government bulldozed it though the National Assembly last month.

BIGGER BEGGING BOWL? Khursheed Shah, whose mild speech contrasted with a hard line taken over the budget by the PPP-led opposition in the Senate, accused the government of enlarging the so-called “begging bowl” for foreign aid contrary to vows by the ruling PML-N in the past of breaking it.

He also questioned the government’s claim that the budget reflected people’s aspirations.

“The begging bowl has not broken, it has become bigger,” the opposition leader said in reference to aid received or sought from international donors like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

But in a lighter vein, he praised Finance Minister Dar’s expertise of arguments that he said could even “prove the present budget as zero” if he were to speak from opposition benches.

Mr Shah questioned the much-touted government issue of $2 billion Eurobond in April at more than seven per cent mark-up while, he said, some other countries had got better deals.

Referring to Mr Dar’s claim that the government could have increased the Eurobond issue to $7bn, the opposition leader said he would see nothing big in this because “you can get even $20bn at this (mark-up) rate”.

Mr Shah said he would speak for about one and a half hours more before the house was adjourned until 4pm on Monday.

Published in Dawn, June 7th, 2014