The criticism of the army by the PML-N continued in the Lower House on Friday, just a day after the corps commanders conference took serious exceptions of “some quarters’ move to run down the armed forces”.
A thin presence of the members reflected the lack of interest of the MPs in the budget debate. But it was the first time a minister stood up to defend the government’s economic team when Minister for Textiles Makhdoom Shahabuddin came out in the open to support the federal budget 2011-12 and responded strongly to the criticism of the budget.
The PML-N’s Tehmina Daultana led her party’s tirade against the armed forces as she waved an ISPR statement and responded to it word by word and sentence by sentence. She said after the coup of October 12, 1999, the army tried to buy the PML-N leaders, but “we told them we are not the people who could be bought… our people were thrown out of the country… even small children were not spared”.
“The army says we are traitors because we criticise them. We are not traitors…they (army) has threatened us … they want to finish us… our forefathers liberated Pakistan…but they (army rulers) have pushed Pakistan to where it stands today… we are not afraid to die…our leader is on a mission to save the country,” she said in a daunting tone. After the 1999 coup, “I was told everything has a price, tell us yours. I told them I don’t need anything… we defied them and did not sell our souls … today we are being called traitors and cowards… General Pasha, if you are a human being, you should have retired,” Tehmina said.
“One incident is happening after the other due to no accountability of the forces by the government… no accountability was carried out after the Abbottabad incident and the Karachi incident will also not be probed as there is no law here,” she asserted.
“There is no law at all. The law prevalent is the jungle’s law,” Tehmina said, adding that the “army knows just to kill or retreat. It does not know how to live peacefully.
I ask the military why did it mention the constitution in its press release when it does not care for it… Hillary Clinton comes and passes directions to the army as well as the civilian government”. Criticising the PPP for compromising on principles, she asked why it had joined hands with the PML-Q when both the PPP and PML-N had struggled jointly for the restoration of democracy.
Calling the PPP government “meek and weak”, Tehmina said she did not question the ruling party leaders as they were powerless. Criticising the government’s economic policy, PML-Q dissident MNA Awais Leghari claimed the government’s economic survey had revealed that inflation had pushed 3.5 million people under the poverty line in the last year only, despite the government claiming a 2.6 percent growth rate.
He rejected the notion that last year’s floods affected GDP growth, saying 2.6 percent was the same ratio on which the country had been growing in the past three years. Leghari claimed the government’s borrowings were crossing “red lines”, as foreign debts had crossed Rs 5.7 trillion, meaning the PPP government had doubled the overall debt burden of the country in only last year