Expressing fear that Pakistan might become a failed state, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) on Tuesday continued its tirade against civilian and military leaderships on the second day of the budget debate while the PPP government’s coalition partner – the MQM – found many faults with the government’s economic policies with its parliamentary party leader, saying that the current financial crisis might disintegrate the country.
While PML-N’s Khwaja Asif was expressing concern over the lack of accountability mechanism in the armed forces, MQM’s parliamentary leader Farooq Sattar feared that if the government ignored the “stitch-in-time”, the country might plunge into chaos leading to disintegration. PPP’s central leader Raja Pervaiz Ashraf defended the government, saying that the opposition’s criticism was just “for the sake of criticism”.
Unlike Nisar Ali Khan, whose opening speech on the budget was primarily focused on security issues and joint sitting of parliament held in the wake of May 2 incident, Asif touched upon the government’s weaknesses in the economic sector and suggested that public sector enterprises should be privatised at the earliest otherwise Pakistan would become a failed state. Attendance from sides of the divide remained discouraging and the number of parliamentarians present in the House kept on shrinking with every hour. Asif of the PML-N said the rulers and the military’s top brass were serving one another’s interests. “They are following the you-scratch-my-back-and-I-will-scratch-yours rule. The interests and ideas of the civilian, military leaders converge on the US agenda,” he said, adding that the rulers along military leadership had used unanimous resolution passed by the joint sitting of the parliament as a bargaining chip with the US administration.
He said haemorrhage in PSEs needed an early attention. “The government has also failed to bridle unabated corruption….. Faisal Saleh Hayat and I succeeded in getting Rs 5 billion from the owners of rental power plants on the Supreme Court’s orders while Rs 12 billion are still to be recovered from them,” he said. He said some terrorists attacked the GHQ in Rawalpindi and then the PNS Mehran Base in Karachi and occupied the buildings for hours. “The navel chief says that it was not a security lapse while the entire nation terms it a lapse… Rulers are supporting them to prolong their rule….. The unanimously passed resolution of the parliament was neglected and today this institution is as disgraced as it has never been in the last 20 years of my political career,” he said.
He alleged the troika used the unanimously passed resolution of parliament as bargaining chip with the US and earlier they sold out national respect to US and bow down for Kerry-Lugar Bill.Asif said the time has come to discard the current security paradigm and come up with an economic viability, as the better economic could only change the situation in the country. “If we keep on depending on US the situation will not change. We will have to review our policy on war against terror. It is not only our war. The whole world should fight it. We have lost 35,000 lives and suffered a financial loss of $68 billion. We are now facing what we did in 80s,” he said. MQM’s Sattar stressed the need for improving tax collection system to generate additional income of Rs 200 billion. He said every taxable income must be taxed and also called for expanding the tax net. He said the government had prepared the budget keeping in view its available resources and its several aspects would impact the people positively. He said it was high time that the government should properly address all the problems for ever instead of having temporary solutions. He said economic revival was a big challenge for the government and urged to work on charter of economy to put the country on path of economic progress. Raja Pervez Ashraf called the national budget 2011-12 balanced and best-possible under the given situation.
