Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz comes to the House regularly. However, his visits have created no impact on the attendance of National Assembly or Senators, or ministers. The Chambers of National Assembly and the Senate are still near empty and we find no more than 20 to 30 members sitting in the House.
Even the generous free lavish breakfast, lunch and dinner arranged on daily by the Finance Minister has not done the trick to ensure the presence of members. It had been a sheer waste of money. For the time being, the Assembly is listening to 30 hours of kudos to the government coming from 200 Treasury members and 25 hours of plaints of 141 members on the opposite side.
Nevertheless, every vote would become a necessity when demands for appropriation of money for each department of the federal government would be presented and voted upon, beginning Tuesday. The government is not dismayed. It enjoys the confidence of the majority.
The Senate proceedings were aborted Saturday morning. There was contest and challenge as to which side was present in the Chamber in majority. The Opposition claimed that it had more members on its side to decide the cut motion that proposed that the defence budget for the current year should be restricted to Rs 1250 billion. Confident that it had the majority, the Opposition pressed the Chairman to count votes.
While the argument on this subject was in progress two or three government members rushed inside the House. The Opposition left the House in protest. They later held a news conference sitting on the floor of the pen space outside the Senate Hall, accusing the Deputy Chairman Jan Mohammad Jamali of 'siding 'with the Opposition and not maintaining neutrality as the presiding officer. Jamali was chairing the Senate proceedings at that time.
While this was happening, State Finance Minister Omar Ayub Khan came in and offered to host the protest session but the Opposition declined the offer. During the same hour, Wasim Sajjad, Leader of the House in the Senate, made repeated calls requesting the Opposition members to return.
Later, at a news conference, the Senate Leader explained that numerically 21 Treasury members were present while the Opposition side had two members less. Even so, the Opposition motion, being a cut motion, could not proceed because that would have tantamount to censor the defence ministry. Moreover, in any case, defence budget was a charged expenditure not subject to vote in the National Assembly.
Be that as it might, Wasim Sajjad personally felt that in that a discussion on non-strategic aspects of this particular defence budget could be examined in the Parliament though one had to be mindful of ever present threat perceptions and the nation had to be prepared to face unpleasant situations.
One might revert here to the anxiety increasingly expressed by the civil society as well as many parliament members for exercising some control over rising expenditures of the defence ministry, as well as to use more money for the needs of the poor and indigent class.
Last year, the National Assembly accepted very few Senate recommendations. There is no idea how many it would accept this year. All the same, the Opposition side did attempt to turn a screw for opening the doors on discussion of the conduct of defence affairs, but failed in this attempt.
Since July 9, the Senate had been busy meeting behind closed door to formulate budgetary recommendations. On Friday night, they tabled a set of 90 formulations, on the floor of the House. One recommendation sought the benefit of cancer treatment for workers. Another one said the annual budget be presented in March, with a mid term review of the budget in December and a direction to respective ministries to send quarterly utilisation reports of funds to Standing Committees of the Parliament.
It said the salaries and pension be increased to 20 per cent and the withholding tax should be limited to 0.75 per cent. The allocation on health sectors should get two and education four per cent of the GDP, over the next five years. Another recommended suggested the finalisation of NFC Award, waiting since 2002, as well as a yield based subsidy scheme.
It was also good to hear MQM member Nawab Mirza, former Sindh Assembly, to scrutinise the budget scientifically. He also recommended the spirit of generosity and fellow felling among all human kind, saying his party was against terrorism.
According to Maulana Mirajuddin, a National Assembly Member from North Waziristan spoke of heads and skulls of dead women of his constituency hanging out on the stony mountains of his area.
His was a heartrending tale of people living in Fata, 70 percent of these people were living below the poverty line. Development plans begun in his area but this development was at the cost of human dignity and pride and hence reprehensible. He also appealed to power that be to save the country from further split and asked the government to extricate itself from the American fold.
Some time later, Begum Rakhsana Aleem Mashahdi asked her government to use 'agencies' in taking count of the adversities of the lower strata of the society as well as keep check on officials who were refusing to provide benefits to poor people instead of creating division among Parliament Members. She was also increased military expenditure, and make greater attempt in cultivating friendships between the people of neighbouring countries.
More important, she raised her voice for restoring development funds of Opposition and minority members. The denial of funds has been a constant refrain of Opposition members for the last two years.
One might recall here that the protest camp by MMA members from Balochistan set up in front of the Parliament House. The matter has been successfully resolved now. Hafiz Hussain Ahmad met Chaudhry Amir Hussain, who assured the delegation that the government had promised enough funds in the next year's budget to redress their grievances.