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Budget Session

Sangsad sits today

Staff Correspondent
The 10th Jatiya Sangsad goes into its maiden budget session today, raising questions about how it will exert its financial control over the government and ensure proper use of public money.
The current parliament was constituted through the January' 5 elections in which 153 MPs were elected uncontested without a single vote being cast.
The House that began its journey on January 29 this year has an unprecedented main opposition, Jatiya Party, whose members are also in the cabinet led by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
The Awami League-led government is now all set to place in the House on Thursday a budget of more than Tk 2.5 lakh crore for the next financial year for parliamentary discussion and authorisation.
Parliamentary affairs experts said the major responsibilities to thoroughly examine the budgetary' proposals and policies lie on the main opposition MPs as lawmakers belonging to the treasury' bench face many limitations in criticising the proposals.
But in the current parliament, the main opposition party has created a peculiar situation by allowing some of its members to join the cabinet.
So it will be very interesting to observe how the opposition will play its role in the budget session, the experts observed
while talking to The Daily Star yesterday.
"The main opposition's performance in the first session of the current parliament to ensure the government's accountability to the House was not much visible.
"Now it has been a matter of observation on their performance in the budget session," said Prof Al Masud Hasanuzzaman, who teaches in the government and politics department ofJahangirnagar University.
Hasanuzzaman, who conducts research on parliamentary processes and good governance issues, said the discussion on the proposed budget gave the MPs opportunities to scrutinise even the activities of the ministries.
"Will the main opposition MPs use the opportunities? We will have to wait to see that," he added.
Echoing the views of Hasanuzzaman, Prof Nizam Ahmed, a teacher of the public administration department of Chittagong University, said the public perception had already strongly been that the main opposition was loyal to
the government.
"So it will be difficult for the members of the main opposition party to oppose and vote against any budgetary proposals in parliament as the budget has been approved by the cabinet in which the Jatiya Party is a part," he said.
Prof Nizam, who researches on the parliamentary process, said the opposition MPs always move cut motions opposing the budgetary allocations against the ministries and discuss the performance of the ministries concerned.
"But this time, the situation may be different," he predicted.
Jatiya Party MP Ziauddin Bablu, however, claimed that the JP had been playing the role of the main opposition party.
"We will protest against any proposal if it goes against people's interests. We will walk out of the House and stage demonstrations outside parliament, if need be," Bablu, who is secretary general of the party, said.
Prior to the beginning of the session this afternoon, the Business Advisory
Committee led by Speaker Shirin Sharmin Choudhury will sit to allocate time for discussion on the proposed budget.
More than 40 hours may be allocated for the discussion, officials in the parliamentsecretariat hinted.
Since the restoration of parliamentary democracy in 1991, opposition MPs in the previous parliaments have boycotted some of the budget sessions.
Such boycotts led to the House's poor performance in exerting its financial control over the executive and in ensuring proper use of public money.
Even in the last parliament, the opposition BNP had boycotted four of the five budget sessions, setting a new record. Yet the BNP MPs had kept on speaking about the budgetary proposals outside parliament.
This time, the BNP has no representation in the current parliament as the party boycotted the January 5 polls.
Since 1991, no parliament has faced a situation of the kind the present House is confronted with.