ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) has decided to “vehemently oppose” the federal budget in parliament and participate in every protest to be organised against it in the country by any union or association.

In a statement issued on Saturday, PPP secretary general Nayyar Bokhari said the party had decided to register its protest over “anti-people budget” inside and outside the parliament.

Mr Bokhari said the PPP would take part in all protest demonstrations to be organised by farmers, labourers, traders or any other association.

Meanwhile, PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari presided over a meeting of the party’s parliamentarians from Zardari House through video link to discuss the federal budget 2020-21 presented by the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) government on Friday and the strategy for the ongoing sessions of the National Assembly and the Senate.

Bilawal claims budget lacks any structural relief plan for the poor, vulnerable communities

Addressing the party members, the PPP chairman termed it a “PTIMF” (a combination of the PTI and the IMF) budget. He said the budget was a “tsunami” for the country’s economy, agriculture and health sectors, which might unleash a wave of poverty and famine-like conditions in the country, if not resisted by the entire nation.

Mr Bhutto-Zardari said the policies of the “selected PTI government” were akin to taking revenge on the people for questioning its legitimacy as its budget exercise exposed its “callousness and indifference” to the urgent needs of the people at such a delicate time for both lives and livelihoods.

The PPP chairman said that it was obvious that the budgetary proposals had ignored the Covid-19 pandemic, locust attacks and well-being of healthcare professionals and the needs of the salaried class, pensioners and poverty-ridden people.

“This budget should have given incentives to pensioners to enable them to stay home but by not increasing their pensions, or being sensitive to the real needs of the poor it claims to champion, it has tried to compel them to come out during a pandemic when the world is encouraging stay home-stay safe policy for all, especially the elderly,” a press release issued by the party’s media office quoted the PPP chairman as having said in the meeting.

Mr Bhutto-Zardari was of the view that the budget was actually for providing comfort to a small “comprador elite” and lacked any structural relief plan for the poor and vulnerable communities.

Parliamentary leader of the PPP in the Senate Sherry Rehman, MNAs Syed Naveed Qamar and Nawab Yousuf Talpur, secretary general of the PPP Punjab Chaudhry Manzoor and others also spoke on the budgetary proposals and described increase in levies on petroleum, instead of General Sales Tax, as a tool to deprive the provinces of their divisible pool share.

They said it was an “anti-agriculture budget,” the source of livelihood for almost 70 per cent of Pakistanis. They said the government had failed to harvest an opportunity to invest in human security, by changing priorities like the rest of the world on additions on spending on the critically depleted health sector.

Besides holding the in-house discussion on the budget, the PPP chairman also continued to contact leaders of other political parties.

In his initial reaction on Friday, he had rejected the budgetary proposals and termed them “very disappointing.” He had announced that the PPP and other opposition parties would soon hold a multi-party conference (MPC) on this “disappointing PTIMF budget” and he would also speak on the floor of the National Assembly.

Mr Bhutto-Zardari had talked to Jamaat-i-Islami chief Senator Sirajul Haq over telephone soon after presentation of the budget on Friday. He had also telephoned Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader Sardar Ayaz Sadiq after the reports that the latter had tested positive for coronavirus.

On Saturday, Mr Bhutto-Zardari telephoned senior vice-president of the PML-N Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, who has also been tested positive for Covid-19.

Published in Dawn, June 14th, 2020