ISLAMABAD, June 22: The National Assembly on Friday passed the present government’s last budget — of over Rs1.8 trillion — without any major changes with an assurance by Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz to a speculation-hit house that it will complete its five-year term until November.

The passage of the budget for fiscal 2007-08, with the approval of the new Finance Bill, came at the end of 10 days of debate in the evening of the year’s longest day.

The prime minister, who took the floor after the final vote on the Finance Bill amid some moments of confusion about whether he would speak or not, referred to speculations about an early dissolution of the 342-seat lower house and said: “I want to take you into confidence and assure you that God-willing this assembly will complete its term.”

“I will tell people talking wrong things or making different speculations that for God’s sake don’t harm democracy,” he said and, amid murmurs of doubts from opposition benches, assured the house again: “This assembly will complete its term.”

A vocal member of the People’s Party Parliamentarians (PPP), Ms Naheed Khan, interjected: “One can’t be sure of the next moment in this country and how can you give such a guarantee.”

She wanted to speak after the prime minister’s speech, but Speaker Chaudhry Amir Hussain denied her such a chance by adjourning the proceedings until 10.30am on Saturday, when the house will take up supplementary demands for grants to approve expenses made by the government in excess of the budget for outgoing fiscal 2006-07.

Before that, another prominent opposition member, Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) deputy secretary-general Liaquat Baloch, also told the house that “this may be our last session” as he denounced the budget as “anti-people”, warned against manipulating the next elections and called for ousting military from politics.

Mr Aziz voiced his confidence that his Pakistan Muslim League party and is allies would contest the next elections from “one platform and will win with God’s blessings”.

But he made no mention of a disqualification charge-sheet, or reference, the opposition gave to the Speaker on Thursday accusing him of wrongdoing in a 2005 stock market crash and the scrapped sale of the Pakistan Steel Mills last year or of a suggestion made by Mr Baloch earlier -- as was done by a PML member on Thursday -- that the two sides undo a ‘bad precedent’ of filing tit-for-tat references that could benefit ‘a third person’.

Minister of State for Finance Omar Ayub Khan, who did not respond to the final round of opposition criticism of the budget during the third reading of the Finance Bill, told the house earlier during the second reading that 51 of the 90 recommendations made by the Senate had been incorporated “after due consideration” by the government.

But he did not explain the significance of his mostly longish nine amendments that were passed compared to the opposition’s 23 -- mostly by MMA members -- all of which were rejected.

Besides general criticism of the government’s economic policies and several specific measure, several opposition members, including PPP’s Naveed Qamar and MMA’s Liaquat Baloch, particularly objected to the use of a money bill like the Finance Bill to make or amend other laws, such as done now with amendments in the Banking and Companies Ordinance 1962 and the creation of a Federal Board of Revenue to replace the Central Board of Revenue.