SUKKUR: Leader of Opposition in the National Assembly Syed Khursheed Ahmed Shah has said the federal budget can be presented in the assembly in the absence of the prime minister as there is no constitutional restriction on such an act.

Referring to the demand of former chief justice of Pakistan, retired Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, for an in-house change, he said that a new prime minister was elected when the incumbent premier resigned but if he was ill and on leave then a senior minister could take up his job.

Talking to reporters at his residence here, Mr Shah called for appointment of a foreign minister and said that the country’s foreign policy was marked by ambiguity because two advisers for foreign affairs had divergent views on different issues.

Counting the failures on the foreign affairs front, he referred to a recent agreement signed between Iran, Afghanistan and India and said it was for the first time that Iran, which had remained a major ally of Pakistan, was sitting with India and Afghanistan.

For Afghanistan, he said, Pakistan had put its security at stake, had hosted more than five million Afghan refugees over the past 35 years and had been embroiled in a major conflict. “It is beyond comprehension what went wrong with us that made Afghanistan to opt for an alliance against Pakistan.”

Mr Shah said that Panama leaks was not an issue concerning only the family of Nawaz Sharif but it was an international issue in which names of several people had been unearthed.

After the preparation of unanimous terms of references (ToR) for a commission to hold an inquiry into the issue, he said, the chief justice would form the commission. He said that it was futile to discuss the contents of the ToR in public.

He said that that they wanted all issues to be resolved in parliament and added that democracy and parliament were interlinked.

Being in power, Mr Shah said, the Pakistan Muslim League-N had to demonstrate flexibility and take the opposition along with it on the Panama Papers issue.

The PPP leader said that everybody wanted to see elimination of corruption and everybody had to play a role to achieve the objective. All politicians would have to declare their assets, he said and added that details of his assets could be seen by anybody on internet.

He said that those people who got bank loans of billions of rupees waived off must also be held accountable. Same is the case with billionaires who are not in politics, who frequently travel abroad and whose children are studying in foreign countries.

About government claims about development and economic growth, Mr Shah said that he could not see development in the country. If the economy had improved, he said, why exports had fallen by 19 per cent, investment had decreased by 7.5pc and the government had obtained huge loans during the three years of its tenure.

He said that it was absurd that the government was acquiring new loans to repay old ones and then claiming that the economy had improved.

In reply to a question, Khursheed Shah admitted that there was a shortage of judges which had created a huge backlog of cases and called for an increase in the number of judges serving at the Supreme Court and the Sindh High Court.

Published in Dawn, May 30th, 2016