I felt forced to spend more time in the National Assembly than my routine Thursday. What kept me stuck there was the anticipated ‘winding up’ speech of Shaukat Fayyaz Tarin.
After thirteen days of the general debate on budgetary proposals, the finance minister was expected to provide comprehensive answers to the plethora of pertinent questions, a large number of opposition members continued pressing during general discussion on budgetary proposals.
Even some weighty ruling party backbenchers also embarrassed the government by declaring the proposed budget, “essentially pampering the already super rich oligarchs.” They bitterly complained that farmers and left behind sections of our society had completely been forgotten.
But Shaukat Tarin remained missing, at least until 5 pm. A well-informed parliamentary secretary, mostly dealing with economic matters, discreetly informed me that the Finance Minister would not be available until late evening. Perhaps, he was waiting for recommendations that the Senate would convey after extensive consideration of budgetary proposals.
The Upper House of our Parliament doesn’t vote on the proposed budget. Yet the finance minister feel obliged to consider its recommendations, somewhat seriously. But I would have certainly missed the deadline for this column, if Tarin had taken the floor fairly late on Thursday evening.
Riaz Pirzada, a veteran parliamentarian currently representing Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), certainly surprised me by delivering a hard-hitting speech Thursday. He is widely respected for sticking to old “gentlemanly traditions” and always stays cool and polite. But Thursday, he literally exploded in the National Assembly on his turn to speak on budgetary proposals.
His passionate speech clearly conveyed that accumulated grievances of the residents of South Punjab were fast reaching the boiling point. He also dropped very heavy hints to hold a powerful institution of the state exclusively responsible for instilling deep feelings of rage and alienation among large swaths of people, feeling abandoned and developing the fear of being deprived of their traditional modes and means of living.
Yet, Riaz Pirzada firmly opposed the creation of a new province in Punjab, ostensibly with the objective of addressing the accumulated grievances of people living in Saraiki-speaking areas. He insisted that primarily the areas, once controlled by the former State of Bahawalpur, until the mid-1950s, were fast turning into bleeding wounds. The river, Sutlej, which historically sustained fertility in the said areas had been “surrendered” to India in the 1960s and Pakistan’s ruling elite callously disregarded the task of developing alternative models of growth since then.
Hina Rabbani Khar of Pakistan Peoples’ Party also delivered a focused speech. She was first elected to the National Assembly in 2002. Shaukat Aziz, the financial czar of General Musharraf took her under his wings. She spent many years as the minister in charge of economic affairs. Later, she also held the ministry of foreign minister during the PPP government of Asif Ali Zardari and Yousaf Raza Gillani.
Ms Khar is certainly a studious type. The experience she had accumulated during various governments enabled her to engagingly discuss the affairs related to fiscal management and foreign affairs. She kept pointing out so many “holes” in the plan, Shaukat Tarin had conceived, presumably to push Pakistan on the fast track to growth.
As the former foreign minister, she also took on the Prime Minister, vigorously, for “strangely announcing a policy shift” regarding the nuclear program of Pakistan, while recently talking to an American journalist on camera.
Taking advantage of her status of being the first women Speaker of the National Assembly from 2008 to 2013, Dr Fehmida Mirza delivered an unnecessarily lengthy speech. Ms Mirza is married to Zulfikar Mirza, who had remained the closest buddy of Asif Ali Zardari from his childhood until 2010. Then they both viciously turned against each other.
After leaving the PPP, Dr Fehmida Mirza returned to the National Assembly in 2018 after winning a ferociously contested election for a seat from the coastal town of Sindh, Badin. She now seeks support from the Grand Democratic Alliance (GDA), an outfit of big landlords, ‘spiritual leaders’ and tribal chiefs of Sindh, deeply hating the PPP since its creation in 1967.
Instead of focusing on the issues, being discussed in the National Assembly, Dr Fehmida Mirza always turns bitter and almost personal to tell the world that under the command of Asif Ali Zardari, the PPP-led government of Sindh continues to “ignore” Badin.
This coastal town is indeed a highly underdeveloped area of Sindh. Water for its crops is fast depleting and the sea is also encroaching vast swaths of its lands, almost ruthlessly. Badin is rather gradually turning into a text bookish poster of the misery and devastation the reality of climate change can bring to an area.
But Dr Fehmida Mirza wants us to believe that the PPP-led government of Sindh remains exclusively responsible for the miseries of Badin. Its residents were perhaps being “punished” for voting for Dr Fehmida Mirza.
But she is surely equipped with convincing data indicating that taking advantage of the ‘autonomy’, provided through the 18th Amendment in our Constitution, the provincial governments wantonly disregard the least developed areas in their domains. They refuse to allocate sufficient funds to push them on the trajectory of growth. She would definitely sound more convincing, if her speeches didn’t appear dominated with anti-Zardari rage and bitterness.
Speakers from both sides of the aisle often discussed the developing scenario in Afghanistan. But hardly a person seemed to have prepared their talking point after diligent homework.
Presumably, our “supreme to all” Parliament also has a Standing Committee to oversee the business conducted at the Foreign Office. If genuinely concerned regarding the developing scene in Afghanistan, they should have forced a special session of the same committee to get themselves appropriately informed after comprehensive briefings from representatives of the quarters, devising policy on this subject.
Dr Fehmida Mirza is a federal minister as well. In that capacity she should have sounded more informed than the rest of legislators, worriedly discussing Afghanistan. But even she exposed her limits by almost begging that instead of discussing Afghanistan, “like a debating club,” the National Assembly of Pakistan should guide and devise policies on this issue. Who is stopping the National Assembly to play its legitimately expected role? This was the question Dr Mirza preferred not to address.
Most members of the National Assembly also appeared equally ill-informed regarding the recent developments in Indian occupied Kashmir. The opposition members continued blaming the Imran government for allegedly abandoning this cause. The ruling party members, especially top ranking ministers, on the contrary, kept boasting that the ‘charisma and dedication” of Imran Khan forcefully motivated the so-called international community to find out a workable solution for the Kashmir issue.
Wailing on Kashmir, most of “our representatives” didn’t appear to be aware of an “All-Party Conference,” Narendra Modi, the Indian Prime Minister, was presiding in New Delhi on Thursday.
The obvious objective of such deliberation and consultation was to “restore the statehood of Kashmir.”
But “the State,” which the Indian government now wants to “restore” would be deprived of Laddakh, once the integral part of the erstwhile State of Jammu and Kashmir. It will also enjoy the “special status” no more, which the Occupied Kashmir had been savoring since 1948 under Article 370 of the Indian Constitution.