News
Tuesday, June 07, 2011
Nisar rejects budget, snubs civil, military leaders* PML-N leader’s debate focusses on issues other than budget
* Accuses civil, military heads of compromising national interests
By Tanveer Ahmed
ISLAMABAD: Opposition Leader in the National Assembly, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan’ outburst spared no one in the country’s civil and military leadership when the assembly on Monday began debate on the federal budget for the forthcoming financial year 2011-12.
As expected, the opposition leader completely rejected the national budget which, he said, had no substance to provide any relief to the hard-pressed masses. Nevertheless, Nisar’s fiery speech consumed most of the time on issues other than the budget.
At the beginning, Nisar spoke about the country’s economic conditions which, according to him, had been turning from bad to worse with each passing day. He corroborated his stance with facts and figures. Nisar then turned his gun at the civil and military leadership and accused it of compromising the national interests by referring to the Abbottabad commission and ensuring developments of the incident. Blaming the government for pushing the economic indictors downward, Nisar said he could not find a single point in whole of the budget that could be termed as pro-people.
He pointed out that even the government’s own figures indicated that the economy was passing through a dismal phase. “The budget deficit has been estimated to increase in future, saving ratio downward, investment declining is what the real picture of the economy. Nisar identified that three vital sectors of the economy – the manufacturing, agriculture and services – are on the downward trajectory whereas the debt was shooting up.
He pointed out that total foreign debt had jumped to $59 billion from $55 billion during the incumbent government’s tenure and accumulatively the public debt had reached to Rs 1 trillion. Referring to the Asian Development Bank’s report, the top Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader said that 42.6 percent of the population had been living below the poverty line whereas the job opportunities were shrinking, the fact which, he added, the government had admitted in the Economic Survey.
He held that the opposition’s protest during the finance minister’s budget speech was because of the stated factors which had been eating up the national kitty, but the rulers had been trying to paint a “positive picture”. Nisar admitted that the opposition’ s protest was a bit hard. But, he maintained, it was left with no option since the government was sticking to its “bad policies”.
He also complained that the government did not even bother to implement the unanimous resolutions of parliament. Referring to the in-camera session of parliament that adopted a unanimous resolution for probe through an independent commission on the Abbattabad incident, Nisar said the government was bent upon degrading the parliamentarians by not implementing their recommendations in letter and spirit.
The PNL-N leader called for making the proceedings of the in-camera session public to let the nation know about the facts and what was transpired in the House. “We want to show the nation the real face of those who compromised the national interests,” remarked Nisar in a veiled reference to the country’s defence institutions. He deplored that immediately after the joint sitting, the civilian as well as military leadership was standing in front of the US diplomat in an obedient way.
Taking President Asif Zardari to task, the opposition leader said that Pakistan was not a legacy of Zardari and his cronies and that the mandate given to the PPP was to serve the masses through good governance instead of just having the aim to spend full five years in power.
Nisar’s speech was followed by PPP’s stalwart Raja Pervez Ashraf, who asked the opposition to give a solution to national economic ills rather than just criticising the government.
Ashraf alleged that the opposition leader was in a habit of attacking the president, and said that the PPP could also carry out such verbal attacks on the PML-N leadership but would not do so because of the party’s policy. Earlier, when the session started under the chair of NA Speaker Dr Fehmida Mirza, the House adopted a resolution to suspend the question-hour session to give more time to the budget debate. The session was adjourned until Tuesday.
Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk