Barbs | Pakistan

ISLAMABAD: Barbs flew in the Senate on Friday with the opposition taking the government to task over its policies and demanding a parliamentary probe into “institutional overreach” and “election fraud”. In response, the government accused the opposition of committing “economic terrorism” while also chiding it for the Results Transmission System (RTS) fiasco in the 2018 general polls. Speaking on a calling-attention notice, PTI’s Ali Zafar, the party’s parliamentary leader in the Senate, said Parliament had been made irrelevant and meaningless. His speech was interrupted several times by the members of the treasury benches, who loudly objected to his remarks. “Matters pertaining to the country’s economy, security and foreign policy are not brought before Parliament; [instead] decisions are taken in drawing rooms,” he said, regretting that even agreements linked to the country’s future were signed while keeping Parliament in the dark. “This is a betrayal of the constitutional concept of civilian supremacy,” he ...

ISLAMABAD: Barbs flew in the Senate on Friday with PTI and PML-N accusing each other of being involved in corruption. The two parties also held each other responsible for the economic mess the country was facing. Opening the budget debate in the House, Leader of the Opposition Syed Shibli Faraz said the government had set wrong priorities of public sector development. He said that while an allocation of Rs135 billion was proposed for water it was Rs227bn for roads. He alleged that it was because it was an easy way to make money. He said that the proposed federal budget for the next year had become controversial in the beginning as questions were being raised about the apparently fudged economic figures presented in the budget. “The sanctity of the budget and the numbers in the budget document appear to be compromised,” he said, adding that the budget is a manipulation of figures as serious objections have been raised over it for the first time. He underlined that agriculture contributed 24 per cent to GDP, wh...