Budget debate: Fiery PML-N tones it down a notch

Stays vague on failures of military, secret agencies.

ISLAMABAD:

A day after the country’s top military commanders sought an end to the “malicious campaign” against them, the lawmakers debating the budget appeared to be shying away from their criticism of the army’s recent failures and surging spending on defence.

There was hardly any rhetoric on the military eating up to one-thirds of the national budget and secret agencies failing to preempt or predict incidents like last month’s US raid in Abbottabad to kill Osama bin Laden and a subsequent militant attack on a Karachi naval airbase, though such references have been part of the debate since early this week.

Members from the opposition, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), who until Thursday were hell bent on “exposing” what they referred to as atrocities the military has meted out to the country, to its flawed policies like seeking strategic depth in Afghanistan, sounded humbled and more calculated in their tone. Instead, there was a vehement defence of the army by one of the MPs from the Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q).

It was Sardar Bahadur Khan Sehar, a member from southern Punjab, who accused those criticising the military of strengthening the hands of enemies who want to psychologically weaken the institution to end its resistance.

“Our forces are being discouraged … and if we take part in it we would unknowingly be supporting the strategy of our enemies,” Sehar argued, without mentioning whom he thought was the enemy and who he believed was maligning the military.

A meeting of the corps commanders on Thursday blamed unspecified ‘quarters’ for campaigning to demoralise the armed forces and said this must end now.

Though an unusually long statement did not mention anybody, the military has in the recent past come under severe criticism from opposition parties, particularly the PML-N, a section of the media and the civil society.

On Wednesday, a PML-N legislator sought to make public the money that goes into the operations of the intelligence agencies every year.

A day later, a couple of his party colleagues called paramilitary troops “terrorists in uniform” during an angry house debate on the killing of a youth in Karachi by Rangers personnel. But Friday heard nothing of the kind. Chaudhry Barjees Tahir, the only PML-N member who spoke on the budget, preferred to stay vague when it came to criticising the military’s recent failures.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 11^th, 2011.