BNP parliamentarian Moudud Ahmed has regretted boycotting the finance minister’s June 6 budget speech by the opposition lawmakers.
Moudud came up with the comment while speaking at parliament on Monday evening.
The BNP-led opposition deputies, who returned to the House on June 3 after boycotting around 83 sittings, did not join the session when Finance Minister AMA Muhith placed the budget for fiscal 2013-14.
“The finance minister in his budget speech termed our budget boycott as tragedy,” mentioned the BNP lawmaker.
“I am sorry that we did not attend the session that day when the finance minister placed the budget before parliament. We all should discard this culture in future.”
Amid clapping by the treasury bench lawmakers, Moudud who leads the opposition MPs in absence of Leader of the House Khaleda Zia said, “I admit that this is a bad culture [boycotting budget speech]. But we have just followed Awami League that while in opposition during 2001-2006 made the boycott culture.”
The BNP-led opposition lawmakers boycotted all the five budget speeches in parliament since 2009.
In reply, AL senior MP Tofail Ahmed said, “It’s not true that we had boycotted all budget speeches in parliament during the past BNP-Jamaat-led government.”
Source: The Daily Star
