During the current budget session, Pakistan National Assembly bombarded the defence budget with sharp criticism. This shows that country has the potential to take on any issue if it wishes so. Can one hope same show up to repeal the religion clause which was inserted in the Constitution back in 1974? Potential is there only first salvo has to be fired. While giving the arguments for the sharp criticism on defence budget, it was said, this is because “Pakistan’s people are now compelled (to ask questions)”, the PML-N’s main speaker on the subject and former Khyber Pakhtunkhwa chief minister, Sardar Mehtab Ahmed Khan, said in a pointed speech before another prominent party figure and former minister, Ahsan Iqbal, and a couple of back-benchers also came hard on the role of generals for involvement in politics since first military ruler Field Marshal Ayub Khan seized power in 1958.
“Pakistan’s defence failures for some years have shaken the people of Pakistan,” Sardar Mehtab said as he accused the General Headquarters of imposing its will on domestic and foreign policy issues. “In the past few years, particularly in the past one year, people’s confidence has been badly affected,” he added.
This was the latest of a series of attacks on the military leadership in the lower house from the country’s largest opposition party since the presentation of the budget for fiscal 2011-12 early this month.
Leader of opposition Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan’s was only a subdued criticism when he opened the general debate on the budget on June 6, but two other senior PML-N members, Khwaja Mohammad Asif and Ms Tehmina Daultana, came out with strident attacks in their speeches afterwards in what seemed to be a party policy, which attracted the charge, in a statement of a June 9 corps commanders’ conference, of a showing “conceptual biases” to run down the armed forces.