ISLAMABAD: Some of former president Pervez Musharraf’s protégés shone through as the most vocal proponents of the PML-N’s budget on the third day of a general debate on Wednesday. Finance Minister Ishaq Dar also seized on the overnight World Bank approval of the Dasu hydropower project to tout it as a major success for Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

Opposition members interrupted Omar Ayub’s speech with chants of “lota, lota” (turncoat). The PML-N lawmaker, a minister of state for finance under the Musharraf government, joined the current National Assembly only three months ago after finally winning a disputed election as a candidate from his native Haripur district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

On Tuesday, an aggressive defence of the budget and attacks on two main opposition parties by another former Musharraf loyalist, Daniyal Aziz, had prompted opposition protests and a suspension of proceedings for about 50 minutes for lack of quorum.

Mr Ayub, the grandson of Pakistan’s first military ruler, Field Marshal Ayub Khan, took a similar line on Wednesday when he attacked the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf’s government in KP, drawing protests from opposition benches.

He quipped that the PTI was after the opposition leader’s seat, currently held by Syed Khursheed Shah of PPP. This was countered by an opposition member, who shot back that Finance Minister Dar should be worrying about his seat going to a newcomer.

There has been no hint of any threat to Mr Dar’s position, or of the possibility of appointing a number two for him.

But some young former Musharraf loyalists, including former Information Technology minister Awais Leghari and Marvi Memon, who is chairperson of the house standing committee on Information and Broadcasting, have been encouraging one another in recent days inside the house.

As Mr Ayub spoke on Wednesday, Ms Memon sat to his right and Mr Aziz and Mr Leghari to his left, possibly to give him any useful advice. Mr Ayub had earlier gone to Mr Daniyal to encourage him for his speech on Tuesday.

But no such camaraderie was shown to PML-N’s Tahir Iqbal, a former Kashmir Affairs minister in the Musharraf government, whose speech in defence of the budget was interrupted by a roar of cheers from the treasury benches to greet the arrival in the house of Nawaz Sharif.

But the prime minister’s brief cameo in the house seemed to be aimed mainly at hearing and cheering a policy statement from Mr Dar, where he credited the present government for Tuesday’s unanimous approval of $588 million credit for the 4,500-megawatt capacity Dasu dam on the River Indus. But he seemed less interested in hearing opposition criticism of his government’s second budget.

The finance minister particularly noted that the United States had also voted for the financing package which, besides the $588 million credit from the International Development Association (IDA), the World Bank group’s grant and low-interest arm, includes what a World Bank statement described as an IDA Partial Guarantee of $460m to help mobilise commercial financing for the project.

He assured the house that the government would simultaneously go ahead with the run of the river Dasu hydroelectric project and the much costlier multipurpose Diamer-Bhasha dam, also on the Indus, 74km upstream of Dasu.

Published in Dawn, June 12th, 2014