Omission of Benazir’s name sparks protest

DAWN.COM

In an apparent bias and legal deviation, new Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, in his budget speech on Wednesday, deleted the name of assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto from the title of an income support programme for millions of poor, provoking the first protest in the new National Assembly by the opposition Pakistan People’s Party (PPP). But the minister’s assurance that what he repeatedly described as the Income Support Programme – instead of the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) launched by the previous PPP-led coalition government to give Rs1,000 monthly to a poor family – would be continued and expanded could not satisfy the protesters, who briefly interrupted his speech to insist that the programme be described by actual name, as given in an act of parliament. Shagufta Jumani, a PPP lawmaker from Sindh, was the first to interrupt the finance minister, saying “it is Benazir Income Support Programme” and she and Mir Munawar Ali Talpur, another party member from the same province – stood up in their seats to agitate their point while similar protest was heard also from several other PPP benches although party stalwarts like Khursheed Ahmed Shah, the new opposition leader, and former speaker Fehmida Mirza, sat quietly on their front benches. “It is the same programme,” retorted the finance minister in perhaps his only remark outside the nearly two hours’ prepared speech, which otherwise passed off smoothly, with repeated cheers by desk-thumping from the ruling PML-N. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif appeared undisturbed by this contrast from unusual cordiality seen over the past few days between him and the PPP leadership during a smooth transition from one elected government to another, as he went through the budget speech at his desk, often marking some points with a ball-point pen, as the finance minister read it out. This was far cry from a noisy PML-N protest at the presentation of the PPP government’s last budget last year when the protesters virtually besieged then finance minister Abdul Hafeez Sheikh, with one of them, Tehmina Daultana, hurling glass bangles at him as an insult while another, Ahsan Iqbal, the new minister for planning and development, unsuccessfully tried to deliver a loaf to him to highlight the high cost of food. In another apparent dig at the PPP, the finance minister cited what he called a “historic decision” by the new prime minister in announcing the renaming of one part of the People’s Works Programme, or PWP-I – under which equal amount are sanctioned for all parliamentarians for public works schemes recommended by them – as Tameer-i-Watan Programme while abolishing its second part, PWP-II, which he said had no structure and depended on a prime minister’s discretion. Though there was no immediate protest at this, the move to rename the BISP, which can be done only by amending the existing act of parliament, is likely to produce some fireworks during the debate on the budget for fiscal 2013-14 beginning on Saturday. The PML-N won simple majority in the 342-seat National Assembly in the May 11 elections, and its allies can easily get an amendment bill passed by the lower house, but such a passage seems unlikely in the 104-seat Senate, where the PPP and its allies in the previous government had a two-thirds majority. Mr Dar claimed credit for designing what he called an “income support fund” as finance minister in the days of the PPP government before his party left the coalition, and, apparently referring to naming it Benazir Income Support Programme, said its “purity” was compromised and it was politicised. The PPP says the programme was given that name to honour the memory of Ms Bhutto, who was killed in a gun and suicide bomb attack on Dec 27, 2007, after she had addressed a campaign rally at Rawalpindi’s Liaquat Bagh park. Mr Dar said the prime minister had decided that the “Income Support Programme would continue and would also be expanded” by raising its size to Rs75bn compared to Rs40bn spent last year (though the BISP website put its 2012-13 allocation at Rs70bn to help 5.5 million families) and the monthly grant to Rs1,200.