An overwhelming majority of legislators hate to stay in Islamabad during weekend days. They prefer to spend these days in their constituencies; attending marriage and funeral ceremonies and being present at spaces, specifically created for patronage seeking visitors.
No wonder, on average, not more than 30 members were found sitting in their seats throughout Saturday sitting of the National Assembly. The scene relentlessly furnished the feel of rushing, half-heartedly, through a ritual called the ‘general debate’ on budgetary proposals. The leaders of major opposition parties had already delivered comprehensive speeches on budgetary pro-posals. Left behind are the second and third tier types and they don’t savor the privilege of speaking on and on, without being checked by the Chair.
Still, a relatively ‘junior’ parliamentarian from Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), Khurram Dastagir Khan, delivered a highly focused speech during the morning session. This member of the National Assembly from Gujranwala had been the minister of commerce, later of defense, during the last PML-N government.
After diligent combing of budget-related documents, he surely succeeded in preparing an example-setting speech that clearly showed how to rub in pertinent questions without being rude and loud.
After describing the proposed budget as “IK’s book of fiction and fake news,” Khurram Dastagir primarily focused on demolishing “the myth” that Shaukat Tarin had not introduced “any new taxes” in the proposals he had developed for the fiscal year of 2021-22.
Repeatedly referring to budget documents, Khurram Dastagir Khan did spin a credible sounding story to amplify the message that Finance Minister had, in effect, protected the already super rich from any new taxes.
The so-called “poor-friendly budget,” Khurram Dastagir insisted, was rather designed to collect at least six-ty percent of the targeted revenues through indirect taxes. We will, therefore, continue to pay more and more for consuming electricity, gas and petrol. Most items of daily use would also turn costlier due to mass scale enforcement of General Sales Tax (GST).
Projecting his reading of the budgetary proposals, Khurram Dastagir tauntingly punctured the claim; the Finance Minister keeps repeatedly drumming to make us believe that he had refused succumbing to “IMF’s dictates” while preparing budget for the new fiscal year.
Khurram Dastagir, so far, also proved to be the one and only member of the National Assembly, who could notice that reading his written and duly printed speech on June 11, 2021, the Finance Minister also an-nounced some taxes, which had been rejected by the Federal Cabinet.
Taxing the use of Internet was the most prominent in the given context. None other than Prime Minister Im-ran Khan firmly refused to approve the idea, when it was put before the federal cabinet. Yet the Finance Minister rushed to “announce” the same while reading his budget speech.
The budget-revealing speech of the Finance Minister is mostly printed many hours before it is formally read before the national assembly, but only after approval from the federal cabinet.
Many people comprising the “core constituency” of Imran Khan are also known for being avid users of Inter-net. They instantly felt upset and to assuage their agitated hearts, media managers of the Imran govern-ment desperately began contacting news managers of 24/7 channels, while Shaukat Tarin’s budget speech was still being transmitted ‘live.’ For obvious reasons, it took long to correct the mistake. Announcing the tax on the use of Internet was not the sole mistake committed by Tarin, however.
Addressing the post-budget presser, the Finance Minister was rather forced to ‘clarify’ a plethora of figures, he had erroneously read in his budget speech. Khurram Dastagir cleverly referred to such mistakes to stress that the government had behaved visibly clumsy while projecting budget-related data.
Like Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, Khurram Dastagir and the rest of opposition legislators also continued to drum the suspicion that in the end, the Imran government would plead the IMF to take care of the “deficit holes,” its proposed budget loudly projects.
But global regulators of the so-called ‘free market economy’ only decide to act soft and somewhat large-hearted, if countries like Pakistan don’t put much resistance to extend cooperation in achieving some ‘stra-tegic objective.”
The US and its NATO allies had again set a new game for Afghanistan and Pakistan’s role in considered ‘crucial’ in this context. The opposition parties collectively suspect, quite strongly, that Shaukat Tarin was primarily expecting some “rewards” for Pakistan’s possibly cooperative behavior vis-à-vis Afghanistan. That’s why the budget prepared by him deliberately left so many ‘deficit holes,’ without explaining how he intends to fill them.
But speaker after speaker from the treasury benches continued “congratulating” the Prime Minister and his finance and fiscal managers for presenting a “poor friendly budget, without enforcing new taxes”. Some speakers from the ruling party also announced, proudly, that Imran Khan had refused to meet or take the phone of some senior officials of the US administration.
“Washington has clearly been conveyed,” speakers from the treasury benches kept claiming with puffed chests, “that if President Biden needs Pakistan’s help for resolving any of his problems, he should person-ally establish contact with Prime Minister Imran Khan.” Then, they niggardly compared his conduct, with many of our prime ministers of the yore, “who would slavishly rush to oblige, even if a junior level US official had approached them.”
Still, a large number of the ruling party members also seemed upset about an ongoing protest in Jani Khel, a strategically important village in erstwhile tribal areas of Pakistan. Like the average consumer of our mainstream media, I am also not sufficiently informed about what actually has been going on there. The ruling party legislators failed to provide mind-clearing details either. But they continued demanding that ‘the issue’ deserved highest-level intervention from the government to get resolved. That surely made me wonder, what’s really stopping our all-powerful prime minister to act for resolving an issue that seemed to have agitated many of his party representatives from Khyber Pakhtunkhawa.