JS witnesses new record

In an unprecedented manner, the opposition in the Jatiya Sangsad yesterday highly lauded the 2014-15 proposed budget by repeatedly thumping on their desks along with the treasury bench lawmakers.
Opposition leader Raushan Ershad and her husband Jatiya Party Chairman HM Ershad and all JP lawmakers present in the House welcomed the budgetary proposals unveiled by the finance minister.
“We have set a new trend in politics by supporting the proposed budget,” claimed JP Secretary General Ziauddin Ahmed Bablu while talking to The Daily Star yesterday.
The JP has already appeared as a curious case as some of its lawmakers have joined the Awami League-led government's cabinet too.
The BNP, which was either in the treasury bench or in opposition since the restoration of parliamentary democracy in the country in 1991, however, opted for keeping silent on the proposed budget.
While in opposition, both the BNP and the Awami League have traditionally rejected the government's budget, terming it anti-people.
BNP acting secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir said Sheikh Hasina's government had no right to place the budget in parliament as the administration came to power through the January 5 “unacceptable and one-sided” election with 153 MPs being elected unopposed.
In the ninth parliament, the then opposition BNP had refrained from attending parliament on all five budget placing days from 2009 to 2013.
Officials in the parliament secretariat could not remember instantly whether any other opposition party was present in the House when the budget was placed in previous parliaments.
Last night, Ershad in his reaction to the proposed budget said the big challenge for the government was to implement the huge volume of the budget.  
“There is concern whether the government will be successful in implementing this budget,” he said in a statement.
Abul Kalam Azad, president of Bangladesh Nationalist Front, the lone opposition in the 10th parliament which neither joined the cabinet nor the AL-led alliance, told The Daily Star that the proposed budget would not make any contribution to eradicating poverty and establishing social justice.
In an instant response to the proposed budget, the Communist Party of Bangladesh has termed the proposed budget “traditional” and rejected it, saying it is full of false assurances.
“In the proposed budget, there are some glitzy proposals to conceal its negative character and cheat people,” the party viewed.