ISLAMABAD: Amid a fifth opposition protest walkout in a row against a series of new unbudgeted taxes, the National Assembly ended a 12-day session on Friday without worthwhile debate on the main issue it was called for – last month’s petrol shortages and energy crisis.

The latest walkout was in continuation of a protest by all opposition parties against a 10 per cent increase in General Sales Tax (GST) on petroleum products to 27 per cent since December and recent imposition of a five per cent regulatory duty on hundreds of importable items.

Also read: Dar refuses to bow, opposition walks out of NA

Finance Minister Ishaq Dar came to the house on Thursday to explain that the new levies were meant to offset a revenue shortfall due to the fall in petroleum prices and that the government had acted within its powers by not seeking approval from the house, but he failed to impress the opposition that wanted the government either to withdraw the new levies or seek parliamentary approval for them.

The government even ignored a softened demand, voiced by opposition leader Khursheed Ahmed Shah on Thursday, that the government at least reduce the GST for petroleum products by five per to 22 per cent and abolish the new regulatory duty of five per cent on furnace oil, which is used in power generation.

That negated hopes for a compromise that had arisen after Water and Power Minister Khawaja Mohmmad Asif talked in the house a day earlier of a possible “headway” on opposition demands, and prompted a fourth walkout on Thursday.

While Khursheed Shah was not present in the house, PPP lawmaker Nafisa Shah wasted no time after the question hour on Friday to repeat the opposition’s rejection of what she called oppressive taxes and an excessive use of statutory regulatory orders (SROs) that she called “SRO-gardi” (misfortune of SROs).

After a similar denunciation of the new levies by Abdul Rashid Godail of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, some half-harted attempts by the Minister of State for Interior, Mohammad Balighur Rehman, and the Parliamentary Secretary for Finance, Rana Mohmmad Afzal, both citing what they called the region’s lowest petroleum prices in Pakistan, failed to avert a fifth opposition walkout.

The Jamaat-i-Islami did not join the walkout this time while one party member, Sher Akbar Khan, tried unsuccessfully to speak on some unspecified problems of his constituency in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

QUORUM REVENGE: The disappointed Jamaat member took revenge by pointing out a lack of quorum in the house, which was confirmed by Deputy Speaker Murtaza Javed Abbasi after ordering a head count, before reading out a residential order proroguing the house after what it called “completing its business”.

The session, which began on Feb 2, was requisitioned by opposition parties to discuss the situation arising out of petrol shortages and the energy crisis in the country.

But the issue was hardly taken up, though it remained on the agenda throughout along with little-discussed problems being faced by internally displaced persons, as petrol shortages, which mainly hit the Punjab province, had been removed by the time the session began and focus shifted to the country’s security situation after the Jan 30 suicide bombing of an Imambargah in Shikarpur town of Sindh which left more than 60 people dead and the opposition protests against the increased GST rates for petroleum products.

Published in Dawn February 14th , 2015

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