ISLAMABAD, June 6: The opposition parties have termed the federal budget for 2005-06 ‘unconstitutional and illegal’ as it has been presented without finalizing the National Finance Commission award.

Members of parliament belonging to the People’s Party Parliamentarians, the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal and nationalist parties said the government had failed to provide any relief to the common people in the budget.

Giving his reaction after the budget speech, leader of the opposition in the National Assembly Maulana Fazlur Rehman said the rulers had failed to control price hike and unemployment despite tall claims regarding improvement in economy.

He said the government would have to revise the budget and the nation would witness several mini-budgets.

The leader of the opposition in the Senate, Mr Raza Rabbani, said the gap between the rich and the poor had increased manifold because of the government’s wrong economic policies.

He said the common man was facing economic strangulation as the government was continuing its economic policies to appease international donors.

Acting parliamentary leader of the PML-N in the National Assembly Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan said there was nothing to cheer for 75 per cent people of the country in the budget.

He said the Musharraf regime had “massive economic space” as compared to any past government but it had failed to provide relief to the majority of the people.

“This is another unconstitutional and illegal budget, presented by a prime minister imposed on the nation by an unelected and self-proclaimed president of the country,” he added.

MNA Abdul Rauf Mengal of the Balochistan National Party said the provinces which had already been facing great difficulties due to the government’s failure to finalize the NFC award had been left at the mercy of an individual. He rejected the budget and termed it ‘anti-people’.

PPP spokesman Senator Farhatullah Babar said the budget presented by the Musharraf regime was a “public relations stunt to cover up the dismal economic situation on one hand and a brazen attempt to advance the interests of ruling generals on the other”.

“It was yet another anti-people, anti-civil society and anti-working class budget, seeking to advance only the exploitative vested interests of the ruling classes,” he said.

“For the third consecutive year the budget was made on the basis of an old NFC award,” he said.

The rulers, he said, had failed to finalize the NFC as required under Article 160 of the constitution for division of resources among the federating units. “This has compounded the difficulties of the smaller provinces in formulating their budgets and bred resentment against the federation,” he said.

He said the increase in military allocation from Rs193 billion to over Rs223 billion was “unjustified and amounted to robbing the poor of Pakistan to enrich the generals rather than strengthening the defence of the country”. Increase in allocations for military spending, he said, was no guarantee of strengthening national security, particularly when there was widespread perception of misuse of funds and refusal of the ruling army generals to submit themselves to accountability and audit according to the norms applied to others segments of the society. Mr Babar rejected the budgetary figures as manipulation.

Deputy parliamentary leader of the MMA in the National Assembly Hafiz Hussain Ahmed said the NWFP and Balochistan would not be able to make their budgets without the NFC award.

He said the MMA would challenge the speaker’s ruling that the budget could be presented without the finalization of the award.

Former privatization minister Syed Naveed Qamar said all the provinces except Punjab would have to present deficit budgets.

He questioned the chief ministers’ decision of empowering President Gen Pervez Musharraf to finalize the NFC award.

He said the constitution provided a forum, the Council of Common Interests, to settle disputes between the provinces and the federation, therefore, giving the powers to an army chief was a “mockery of the constitution”.

He said the increase in the salaries of government employees was dismal if compared to the double-digit inflation.