Bilawal, Shahbaz vow to work together against ‘alien’ budget

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, along with Leader of Opposition in the National Assembly Shahbaz Sharif, on Friday said the federal budget which the government presented appeared to be “some other country’s budget” and vowed to jointly combat the proposal.

Bilawal said the people who were listening to the government’s budget “must have been thinking that this is some other country’s budget”, he told reporters outside Parliament. “It did not sound like Pakistan’s budget.”

There is historic inflation, unemployment, and poverty, Bilawal said, alleging the Prime Minister and finance minister’s claims of economic growth “sound baseless in such a situation”. The PPP chairman said the minister’s claims were akin to rubbing salt in the wounds of the Pakistanis, “who are suffering under the government’s policies”.

“The differences between the opposition aside, we will face this selected and incompetent government’s budget together [...] I reiterate my promise that all of PPP’s MNA’s will hand over their votes to opposition leader Shahbaz Sharif to use against the budget,” Bilawal pledged.

When he spoke, Shahbaz said the opposition would join hands and give a tough time to the government during the budget debate and will “expose their fudged figures”. “When the poor are dying of hunger and unemployment and inflation are skyrocketing, how can they claim that the country is witnessing economic growth?” Shahbaz said. PML-N leader Ahsan Iqbal also criticised the government’s proposal to increase the income of salaried individuals by 10 per cent and called the move the “worst joke”. “A 10 per cent increase in the salaries after record inflation is the worst joke made by the government with them,” tweeted Iqbal as Tarin presented the budget in the National Assembly. “We reject this. At least a 20 per cent increase should be given,” said the former interior minister.