Opposition walks out of NA over $1.5bn Saudi ‘gift’

ISLAMABAD: Unsatisfied with a government assurance that a $1.5 billion ‘gift’ received most probably from Saudi Arabia was without strings, almost the entire opposition walked out of the National Assembly on Thursday, protesting also at some of people’s day-to-day worries, including a threat to tens of thousands of state jobs. And when the protesters returned to the chamber after the token walkout, opposition leader Khursheed Ahmed Shah cast aside his usual soft speech to warn of a hunger strike till death by him outside the parliament house if the government went for sacking one-time contract employees in government departments and state-run corporations from an estimated 225,000 regularised by the previous PPP-led government. The first opposition walkout of the session came after a Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) protest at non-appearance of any of eight adjournment motions submitted by the largest opposition party in the house, including one about the $1.5 billion Saudi gift, a broadside by Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaf (PTI) chairman Imran Khan that recalled what he called a “big price” Pakistan had to pay for such gifts in the past, and an outburst by Awami Muslim League leader Sheikh Rashid Ahmed over a mix of people’s hardships, including high prices, threats of jobs cuts and the government’s failure to seek a US apology over a US government agency forcing the PIA to disallow him to a board a flight to Canada last week that was to overfly the United States. Four members of the Jamaat-i-Islami, which is an ally in the PTI-led coalition government in Khyber Pakhtunkhawa province, and Qaumi Watan Party leader Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao did not join the walkout without explaining breaking ranks with the opposition in the first such action in the four days of the present session of the house. Imran Khan seemed overly eager to attack the government in his first appearance in the present session as, quite early in the sitting, he asked the government why the foreign ministry had not sought an American apology for aborting Sheikh Rashid’s travel, before he made a common cause with PPP’s Nafisa Shah after she was apparently snubbed by Speaker Sardar Ayaz Sadiq for questioning the absence of any of eight adjournment motions submitted by her party to raise discussion on different issues while there was no government business listed on the day’s agenda. “You decide if any of them was worth taking up,” the speaker told the member, who cited the issue of the $1.5 billion “friendly gift” whose donor, she said, was not identified by Finance Minister Ishaq Dar in his explanation to the house, only to be told by the chair: “I think he identified (the donor by implication).” The finance minister had told the house on Wednesday that the amount was “totally a friendly gift as they had done in 1999”, in a reference to what he called $2 billion worth of petrol and diesel received by Pakistan for free under a Saudi oil facility to help the country tide over punitive international sanctions for its May 1998 nuclear tests. The issue of opposition adjournment motions was agitated angrily also by Mr Khursheed Shah in his speech, which was mainly devoted to what he saw as government intentions to sack employees whose contract jobs were regularised by the previous government. And the speaker seemed willing to reconsider his position as he invited Science and Technology Minister Zahid Hamid, who usually also looks after the legal side of government’s parliamentary business, and PPP’s senior lawmaker Naveed Qamar to meet him in his chamber to discuss adjournment motions, before adjourning the house until 10.30am on Friday. In what he described as “the voice of the entire opposition”, Mr Shah called for the retention of all of about 225,000 employees he said had been regularised or re-employed “without discrimination” on contract jobs given by different governments over the past many years, but he particularly seized on a media report of a file of about 60,000 such employees lying before Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif for a decision. “I appeal to Nawaz Sharif that for God’s sake do not throw out these children,” he said and threatened that in the event of termination of their services, “I will sit with these children in a hunger strike till death.” IMRAN’S FEARS: In his speech earlier, Imran Khan said Pakistan had paid “a very high price for such gifts” as he referred to its role in training “Mujahideen” to fight the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s and later to help US invasion of Afghanistan 9/11 attacks, and voiced his fears that the latest Saudi gift could involve this country in a “Shia-Sunni war”. “Nobody will give $1.5 billion for free,” he said.