LAHORE: A record was set in the history of the parliament on Thursday as a father and his son delivered the opening speeches in the National Assembly and the Punjab Assembly on the same day in the budget session as the opposition leaders.
Shehbaz Sharif, opposition leader in National Assembly, delivered his budget speech for the year 2021-22 in the NA, whereas his son Hamza Shehbaz opened the debate on Punjab budget for 2021-22 in the Punjab Assembly. Shehbaz opened the post-budget session a couple of days ago but due to ruckus in the NA had to cut it short and interestingly delivered the detailed speech on the same day when his son Hamza delivered his opening speech in the Punjab Assembly.
This is noteworthy that it is the parliamentary tradition that the opposition leader delivers the opening speech in the post-budget session. Currently, Shehbaz Sharif is the opposition leader in NA whereas his son Hamza is the opposition leader in Punjab. Between 1993 and 1996, Shehbaz was the opposition leader in Punjab and his elder brother Nawaz Sharif was the opposition leader in the National Assembly. Hamza Shehbaz's speech in the PA grilled the government over its inability to control price hike and provide any relief to the common man. He termed the provincial budget nothing but a jugglery of words. In his opening speech on the floor of the Punjab Assembly in the post-budget session, Hamza said every citizen had nurtured hopes from the government in the budget but unfortunately the performance of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf narrated a different tale. He said whatever happened in the National Assembly was highly disappointing and urged the political parties to give space to each other. He stated that criticism should be for the sake of improvement not for the sake of criticism. He said if the elected representatives start throwing bottles and budget books in the parliament, people would not believe in the power of vote. Commenting over the annual budget 2021-22 and the performance of the government, he said the government had done nothing in its first three years. He said those who had claimed to make Southern Punjab a separate province ignored this part and asked where were the hospitals that were to be established in Layyah, Rajanpur, Rahimyar Khan, Multan. He said PMLN had established an institute like PKLI but what the government had done to this project is regrettable. He went on to say that the government which chanted the slogan of transparency in fact made a record promotion in corruption. A fair probe into cases related to helicopter, Malam Jabba, sugar and wheat scandal as well as the Ring Road scandal was needed. Only in this way, it could be accepted that the PTI government is corruption-free.
Hamza said a lot was stated about the 56 companies formed in the previous tenure but the government had accepted before court that there was nothing wrong with the setting up of these bodies. Slamming the government over the poor law and order situation, he said the Ring Road, Lahore, incident in which a mother was raped before her children was heart-rending. He said the incident exposed the performance of the Safe City Authority as nearly three thousands of its cameras out of the total eight thousands are dysfunctional. Hamza said the Sahiwal incident in which parents were gunned down before their children was not only condemnable but proved the failure of the government in protecting the lives of common citizens. He grilled the government for patronizing sugar mafia and expressed grief over the way the government ignored the agriculture sector.
